The Eichmann of Ballona (slightly revised resend)

[davemarc]

I'm not sure if my previous version got through the mailing list
system....Sorry about the bandwidth and any confusion....

> From: Steelhead <sitka at teleport.com>
> To: pynchon-l at waste.org
> Subject: The Eichmann of Ballona
> Date: Tuesday, February 25, 1997 7:37 PM
> 
> A quivering, davemarc, who sounds like he may be on the Spielberg/Shoah
> Project dole--or would like to be--shouts:

I'm not quivering.  I'm not paid by Spielberg or Shoah, though I could
certainly use some extra money.  And I wasn't shouting.  
> 
[snip]
> 
> >Once again Jeffrey St. Clair trots out this asinine comparison between
> >Spielberg and Riefenstahl.  Riefenstahl, the artist who was near the top
of
> >the Nazi regime but for decades and decades
> >claims to have known nothing about its offenses against humanity.  Years
> >before the Final Solution, Fritz Lang, the first pick for the job Leni
got,
> >figured out that he ought to get his ass out of the country (and make
> >anti-Nazi propaganda films) rather serve Hitler, but Riefenstahl stayed
and
> >stayed and basked in the Nazi limelight.  She shot miles and miles of
film
> >under the Nazi regime, but how much of those pro-Nazi commercials
depicted
> >the suffering of the Jews, the gypsies, the communists in anyway? 
Precious
> >little.
> 
> Fritz Lang was an artist; Speilberg and Riefenstahl filthy propagandists.
> Spielberg feeds visual junk to the masses for money; Riefenstahl sold her
> talents to darker forces. I don't like Leni Riefenstahl or her films. She
> should have stayed in jail a long time, right there with that elusive Von
> Braun, whose achievements in ballistics and aspirations of technological
> transcendence are implicitly celebrated in many of Spielberg's films.

If Steely doesn't like Riefenstahl or her films, and he thinks that she
"sold her talents to darker forces," why did he suggest that she had more
heart than Spielberg?
> 
> >And Jeffrey St. Clair, who
> >doesn't have a problem demonizing Henry Ford for distributing
anti-Jewish
> >tracts, insists on championing her in order to criticize Steven
Spielberg,
> >who happens to spearhead the Shoah Project (though you wouldn't know
that
> >from reading Jeffrey St. Clair's rants).
> 
> Did I champion her, davemarc? I said she was a superior film-maker to SS.
> That's not saying much, in my opinion.

Jeffrey St. Clair wrote "Leni Reifenstahl--though Leni is by far the more
gifted film-maker, and, oddly enough, has probably more heart than Mr. S,
despite his talent for selling schmaltz."  He trots out the great Nazi
denier from among all the other film directors he could use.
> 
> As for the Shoah Project, Spielberg claimed that all of the "profits from
> Schindler's List" would be funneled to this foundation. But it turns out
> that 90 percent of the money (about $30 million as of last summer)
funding
> the Shoah Project comes from corporations. 

Here we go again.  The "But" is deceptive.  There's nothing contradictory
(or secret)
about Spielberg's statement and the fact that other corporations and
individuals support Shoah.

> Many of them with past links to
> the Nazi regime. 

Good for Spielberg.

> Spielberg also asked for and received a $1 million grant
> from the National Endowment of the Humanities, even though the staff
> stridently objected on the grounds that the project was already
> well-funded, Spielberg is a near billionaire, and there were worthier
> applications. SS took his case to Senators DiFi and Barbara Boxer, who
> pushed the grant through in a special congressional appropriation. I
wrote
> a 3,000 word article on the subject for City Pages and the New Statesman.
> Part of it also turned up in an article in Counterpunch. It was
extensively
> researched, relied dozens of interviews, and included a detailed
> examination of the Shoah Foundation's filings with the IRS.

Naturally, the issue of "worthier applications" is a subjective one. 
Nevertheless, Spielberg's as entitled to lobby as anyone else in this
country, just as Jeffrey St. Clair's entitled to inform the public about
it.  
> 
> Spielberg is a corporate welfare cheat of astonishing proportions.
> Spielberg and his billionaire allies, Katzenberg, Geffen, Bill Gates, and
> Paul Allen, have demanded more than $150 million in tax inducements from
> the State of California and the City of LA to build their fucking
> Dreamworks studio that will annihilate the Ballona Wetlands, the last
> greenspace in LA county and a vital stop on the Pacific Flyway for
millions
> of migratory birds. Some species will be extirpated from the region by
this
> project. That is viewed as a kind of genocide to the Deep Ecology crowd,
of
> which I reluctantly, at times, count myself.
> 
> Money that should have been going to help inner city LA will now end up
in
> the pockets of billionaires. Families in Compton may go without water or
> electricity because of this massive diversion of needed funds. The taxes
of
> the poor are going up, so that Dreamworks can pay nothing at all. This
> means that people will have to work more hours to bring home less pay so
> that Stevie can have his studio on the cheap. That's political extortion
> and a kind of slavery, isn't it?

Jeffrey St. Clair's also entitled to his opinion about this famously
complex issue, upon which even environmentalists are broadly polarized.  
> 
> Will children be harmed by this amazing transfer of wealth? You bet. The
> Playa Vista/Dreamworks project is the biggest development in the history
of
> LA. It will feed 200,000 new commuter trips a day, adding an estimated 13
> tons of air pollutants into the poisonous LA atmosphere a day! More
> children will develop asthma, and more elderly and infirm people may well
> die as a result. That's a kind of homocide, isn't it? A gassing of the
> weakest members of the LA community. Courtesy of the kind hearted folks
at
> Dreamworks.

All of these prognostications are highly debatable, but the foax on this
list wouldn't necessarily know that from reading Jeffrey St. Clair's
assertions.  There's no acknowledgment of the likelihood that things may
well
turn out otherwise from his vision.  He also focuses on Spielberg and his
cronies--perfectly fine--but I think the responsibility rests more with the
legislators.  Same applies to the Congressional funding.  
> 
> >Maybe Jeffrey St. Clair's not aware that these days there's just a
teensy
> >weensy debate on whether or not any movie can have a single theme (and
> >maybe he's not aware that "both" should only modify a list of two
> >components).
> 
> Yes, Spielberg, in particular, is noted for the "complexity" of this
> "themes." Right up there with Antonioni, Greenaway and Von Trier on the
> complexity scale.

I think that the debate over Schindler's character actually indicates the
relative
complexity of Schindler's List (in comparison to Spielberg's other films). 
Schindler's
problematic morality is indeed
represented in the movie.  Spielberg's certainly no Antonioni, but jeez--at
least he's trying for once.  
> 
> >Schindler enacted a lower, more problematic, more debatable,
> >more questionable, form of righteousness while advancing himself. 
That's
> >clear in the film.
> 
> My point is the man should have been brought before the Nuremburg
Tribunal,
> and, if convicted, thrown in jail--not immortallized as a hero. Perhaps,
> spared execution, but certainly locked up for a long, long time.

I think he's been immortalized--for the time being, at least--as a flawed
man who took heroic action under the same regime Goldhagen documented.  And
it's important to note that in Israel, this "immortalization" took place
even before Keneally's book was conceived.  And Schindler may have really
been changed by the experience.  

After the war, Schindler fingered
Commandant Liepold and was rewarded for his heroic
acts.  From Keneally:

"He was penniless [so much for his profiteering], but the Joint
Distribution Committee, the international Jewish relief organization to
whom Oskar had made reports during the war and to whom his record was
known, were willing to help him.  In 1949 they made him an ex gratia
payment of $15,000 and gave a reference ('To Whom It May Concern') signed
by M. W. Beckelman, the vice chairman of the 'Joint's' Executive Council. 
It said:

'The American Joint Distribution Committee has thoroughly investigated the
wartime and Occupation activities of Mr. Schindler....We recommend
wholeheartedly that all organizations and individuals contacted by Mr.
Schindler do their utmost to help him, in recognition of his outstanding
service....

'Under the guise of operating a Nazi labor factory first in Poland and then
in the Sudetenland, Mr. Schindler managed to take in as employees and
protect Jewish men and women destined for death in Auschwitz or other
infamous concentration camps....'Schindler's camp in Brinnlitz,' witnesses
have told the Joint Distribution Committee, 'was teh only camp in the
Nazi-occupied territories where a Jew was never killed, or even beaten, but
was always treated as a human being.'

'Now that he is about to begin his life anew, let us help him as once he
helped our brethren.'

When he sailed for Argentina, he took with him half a dozen families of
Schindlerjuden, paying the passage for many of them...."

A jail sentence for this man?  Pretty merciless and unproductive, I'd say. 
And it's not as if Schindler's postwar life was one of opulence.  
> 
> > The socio-political implication: Germany can
> > be rebuilt with capitalist and social/democratic institutions and we'll
> not
> > have to worry about another spasm of genocidal tendencies breaking out.
> 
> I said it was an implication. To me, the Schindler morality play
resembles
> a Marshall Plan in miniature, carrying the absurd message that through
> capitalism work really can set you free (and keep the West safe from
> Commies.) Say, where were those Soviet troops--posed to liberate
> Auschwitz--in SL, anyway?

They're mentioned at the end--as being continued threats to the Jews.  As
are the troops to the West.  That leads to the Zionist ending, providing
the reason why a homeland was so important an issue in the face of the
Holocaust.
> 
[snip]
> 
> >Jeffrey St. Clair's been informed repeatedly about the Shoah Project--he
even
> >>seems to have done some research about it--yet he seems to forget about
it
> >whenever he launches these idiotic diatribes.
> 
> See above.

The point is that Jeffrey St. Clair asks why didn't Spielberg tell this
story or that story--when that's exactly what Spielberg's doing now.  He's
"telling the stories" through the oral history project.
> 
> >I'd never accuse Jeffrey St. Clair of perpetuating a
> >Big Lie (that's Riefenstahl's specialty), but there are so many
omissions
> >and mistakes in his posts that I'm beginning to think he's a specialist
in
> >little lies.  I'm even beginning to have trouble bringing myself to read
> >his articles because I've found so many of his assertions here to be
> >specious.
> 
> My writings may be specious, but they do tend to survive the best
assaults
> of the armies of fact-checkers that now plague all freelance journalists
> these days. But please don't belabour yourself on my account, davemarc.
And
> besides, my writing doesn't depend on a fetish for concealed
> tape-recorders, as--if the reports of your session with Chrissie are
> accurate--yours appears to do.
> 
Jeffrey St. Clair's writings on this list do not receive "the best
assaults...of fact-checkers" yet he makes assertions as if they did.  A
little less stridency would go a long way.

As for the insinuation about a concealed tape recorder, it's hard to know
where to begin.  My writing doesn't depend on a fetish for concealed
tape-recorders.  On the night in question, I actually had a tape recorder
with me but I didn't conceal it or use it in an unethical manner.  That's
legal and ethical.  (I also had a pen with me somewhere, and I think that's
okay, too.)  After the meeting, I mumbled a few minutes of notes into the
recorder (here, I'll play the tape for you now)--and that's all the action
it got that night, and I'm proud to tell the world of it.

But this brings up an issue for me.  To what reports is Jeffrey St. Clair
referring?  I'd appreciate knowing a bit more about this, because I'd like
to
clear up any misunderstandings.

And, as a point of Netiquette, I think it would have been nice--civil,
even--for Jeffrey St. Clair to bring this up privately first.  

Good thing nobody knows about the Uzi I had stashed under my loincloth,

davemarc (who was actually just glad to meet *everyone* that unforgettable
evening)