comments about and typos in chapter 6 and epilogue
Subject: comments about and typos in chapter 6 and epilogue
From: Jonathan Farley <lattice.theory@gmail.com>
Date: 10/5/10, 20:27
To: Barrett Brown <barriticus@gmail.com>
Chapter 6
--------------
Manning Marable wrote about the Vanderbilt case in "Living Black History" (I think p.12), only he gets it wrong since he buys into the idea that Vanderbilt was fighting the neo-Confederates. I have mentioned this to him in person but I never heard back from him. He is a fake black radical, but you might consider contacting him to see if Columbia will invite you to give a talk, or if Marable will give you a quote.
You can also get a quote from Tim Wise.
Carol Swain is at Vanderbilt and has written a book on White Nationalism. She might give you a quote---or invite you to speak at Vanderbilt. You could make a case for speaking in January during Vanderbilt's MLK celebrations. The way to do this---it may not be your style but I have experience with these people---is to more or less bluntly indicate to them that, if they don't, they could get lumped in with the racists, and you're the one with the pen. You can also make the (cowardly) black faculty at Vanderbilt feel guilty if they don't chip in to invite you as a speaker. The same applies to the NAACP. Contact Ben Jealous, president of the NAACP, and Sharon Epperson, the sister of Ben's wife and a CNBC correspondent
to put you on a speaking tour or on TV. You can bluntly tell them that you know they were involved in the attack's being so successful. (Sharon's sister Lia was a lawyer with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund.) Again, politeness won't work with these people. Jabari Asim is editor of the NAACP Magazine. They should run an excerpt of your book.
Same advice applies to Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center. I sent you his shameful and foolish email to me: you can just include it in your email to him.
The Vanderbilt Hustler, being an irresponsible student newspaper, might run a review of your book, which could therefore generate more news articles, so it would be worth it to contact them. "Michael Cass" <mcass@tennessean.com> was (is?) the education reporter at the Tennessean.
Try to contact James Lawson. He does not have email: you will have to call and write his church in LA. He may give you a quote.
I'll try to promote your book, but you (i.e., your agent) should be the one to contact the people I have mentioned. My reputation is still so bad in the US that I am less likely to get anywhere if I am the one contacting people.
Ruth Simmons, president of Brown University, may be interested (if you can get through to her---you could try to via the chair of the math department as well as directly). Maybe she'll give you a quote if you make her feel guilty, since your chapter also deals with "university presidents as moral leaders".
Mercede Johnston may mention your book on your blog, if you can reach her: she wants to damage the Palins and spreading information about their connection to white supremacists would fit the bill.
If I don't always indicate which parts I found funny, it's only because I read much of this chapter last year. The "I am Apollo" bit was great, though.
p. 191
You might want to mention McCain's recent interview with Todd Palin.
He did anger the people at Brown by telling him this would be his last university presidency, and then leaving after 2 years to come to Vanderbilt. Ironically, there was an issue related to slavery going on there too: Brown's black president---who did once come to a math lecture of mine, on a rainy Saturday morning---decided to acknowledge how much of its money came from slavery (or something like that).
Also, Gee's wife---whom he has since divorced---was caught smoking marijuana on campus. Perhaps you could make a joke out of this. My own joke is that Gee caused a controversy at Brown when he wanted to change the name from Brown to "African-American and Latino," and that he wears a bow-tie because he belongs to a weird religion: The Nation of Islam. (He's actually a Mormon.)
l. -9
"i.e.," should be "i.e."
l. -8
"Klu" should be "Ku"
l. -4
"not to" should be "to not"
Also, you use quotation marks even though this whole text is already indented as a block, but you don't do this in other cases. (If you remove the double quotation marks, don't forget to put "request" in double quotation marks instead of single.)
p. 215 l. -1
This line is indented wrong.
p. 217 ll. 8-10
This is false. The quickest fix is to change "refusing" to "reluctant" OR to delete "seven".
For years I didn't even want to talk about the case: the whole time I was at MIT I never indicated I was at Vanderbilt, not even to say I had gotten tenure (which I learned about only in Thanksgiving 2003, because I made sure not to read any mail coming from Vanderbilt), except for one speech I gave at Lafayette College, "How to Destroy Enemies and Manipulate People" in late 2004. In 2008, I contacted the Wall Street Journal reporters Joann.Lublin@wsj.com who had written about Gee, and one of them wanted me to send her more information, but evidently she did nothing with it. In 2006, the New York Times wrote a story about James Lawson, whom Vanderbilt had expelled because he had joined the Civil Rights Movement. In 2006 Vanderbilt invited him as a visiting professor. I had told Lawson about what Vanderbilt did to me 40 years they had expelled him; I didn't expect him to turn down his professorship on this account but I did expect him to mention what happened to me either in his MLK Day speech or to the administration. He did neither. A fraud. Anyway, the New York Times reporter never did get back to me so I did not in the end provide any information to that reporter.
Also, in 2007, after it was clear any chance of getting a job at Caltech had collapsed, I did finally begin to write about what happened to me, with the article from The Guardian (on-line). You are the first writer to put anything on paper that is not directly on the side of or essentially slanted in favor of the neo-Confederates, and, in any medium, only Ed Sebesta and you ever wrote anything like that.
My memory is bad, but I believe I did tell you information I had never told any other writer.
p. 218 ll. 5-9
Actually, he didn't: Someone (I guess him) claimed that the documents were fake because a superscript "th" in the documents could not be produced by typewriters in the 1960's. CBS, in true cowardly fashion, retracted the story and I guess Rather apologized too. But in fact, typewriters could make the "th": in fact, that had been possible since the 1930's.
The documents might still be fake, but the argument used to say they were fake was an invalid argument, the reason for retracting the story was not that the documents were fake or questionable but that the Right Wing had formed its armada and liberals are scared.
But I care less about Rather than I do about McCain, so if this guy is on board with attacking McCain, fine.
p. 220 l. 9
"that that" should be "that"?
p. 221 l. 5
I have no idea what "pro chose" should be
l. 12
should "spend" be "don't spend"?
l. 15
I don't get this.
p. 222 ll. 15-16
Maybe you mean to write this, but the actual name of the group is "Sons of Confederate Veterans" not "Sons of the Confederacy"
p. 224 ll. 5-14
These lines should be indented.
l. 17
Here you write "alter ego" but on a previous page you write "alter-ego"
p.225 l. -13
"been" shouldn't be there
p.231 l. 1
Should "tacts" be "facts"?
Epilogue
------------
p.237
It's your book, but I generally hate promulgating the Greek myth. The so-called civilization of Greece was derived from a greater, far older civilization in Egypt, so clearly whatever happened in Greece could not have been the beginning of abstract thought. I assume your sentence "Upon...things" was supposed to be that complicated.
p. 238 l. -12
Do you want to italicize "Orality and Literacy"?
p. 240 l. 12
My dictionary says "mind-set" not "mindset"
p. 241 l. -4
heh
p.242 l. 2
smile
l.3
heh
p.243 l. 19
This is like the Oxford Union. Incidentally, Oxford/Cambridge students also are rewarded for mere memorization---even in math. I knew someone who had been a student at Cambridge. There was one proof he knew was going to be on the exam, and he didn't understand it, so he merely memorized it, word for word and symbol for symbol.
p. 244 l. -3
"or oral" should be "of oral"
The part of the sentence "or even...way" (ending at the top of p.245) seems not quite grammatical to me
p. 245 ll. 3-4
"or in it themselves" I find grammatically confusing
l. -6
Do you want to say "considerably lesser"? Your point here is that these old people still can master something new
p. 247 l. 15
You use the word "mediums" on a previous page
l. -4
"is" should be "are"
p.250 l. 6
You need a left quotation mark in front of "Informed"