[Mb-hair] Good press

[Katie Kasben]

Hey Kids,

I wanted to share with you a great letter to the editor of the Raleigh News 
and Observer (our state capitol's paper, and about 4 hours away from here):

*the last two paragraphs are my favourite...

Mark Schultz
Orange County editor
The News & Observer
Chapel Hill News editor
(919) 932-2003

Now is the time to act
Perry Young column for September 05

A few weeks ago, a very nice lady organized a genteel gathering at
the downtown post office in support of Cindy Sheehan’s anti-war
protest outside the President’s vacation ranch in Crawford, Texas.
I hung about the edges, expecting to be bored by the usual liberal
speeches.  But, no, this woman said there would be no speeches, just a
quiet show of support.  And, so, for several long minutes, we just
stood there.

I finally wandered off, frustrated that nobody was saying anything,
nobody was doing anything.  More to the point, why wasn’t I doing
more?

After witnessing the obscenity of the senseless slaughter in Vietnam
as a correspondent, I came back and joined in every major peace march
on Washington.  Then, as now, our President showed a profound
indifference to poor people in this country and the devastation we
were causing half way around the world.  As we sang, “All we are
saying is give peace a chance,” armed troops surrounded the White
House and turned the tear gas on us.

Now it seems one pathetic Gold Star mother has finally aroused our
outrage about the lies that led to the current quagmire in Iraq.  Ms.
Sheehan’s courageous and timely stand was pushed to the back pages by
hurricane Katrina and  the unbelievable pictures of the needless
suffering and dying of people not in Somalia or Iraq, but in our own
backyard.


We looked in the mirror and were appalled by our own self-image.  The
richest country the world has ever known was simply incapable of
taking care of its own people in a time of crisis.  The Bush
administration was suddenly exposed for what it has been all along:
an incompetent bunch of ideologues who are simply not worthy of the
high offices they’ve been pushed into.

It is one thing to giggle and grin about the sport of hardball
politics; it is quite another when these kinds of self-serving
decisions result in the loss of lives and livelihoods of hundreds of
thousands of people.  The President is guilty of criminal neglect on a
scale never before seen in America.  We are left with the indelible
images of the poor people in Louisiana and Mississippi crying out for
help while Condi Rice gads about New York and Bush blithely flies off
to San Diego for another multi- million dollar fund raiser.

It is eerie to watch; as Bush actually seems to look more and more
like Nixon with his weirdly inappropriate facial gestures and that
loony giggle that often follows even the most solemn words written for
him to mispronounce.

But in this moment of our country’s dire need, some rays of hope
shine through.  The glamorous stars of television came alive as never
before and proved themselves worthy of the profession of Edward R.
Murrow.  For once, the administration could not put a happy face on
yet another catastrophe.  This time, their lies could be proven by the
pictures, live and in color from the battlefront.

And in spite of our leaders indifference, the American people have
responded with an outpouring of love and generosity unparalleled in
our history.  People aren’t just giving money, they’re offering up
their times, their homes, their very lives to help.  Maybe we are
finally overcoming the greed and selfishness of the 1980s and 1990s.
As if in answer to my personal yearning for the 1960s, I was recently
invited back to Asheville for a new production of the rock musical,
Hair.

Now, if you think nothing could be more dated than this show which I
first saw as a cabaret skit at Cheetah discotheque in New York in
1967, you are dead wrong.  As I sat listening to the joyful music of
protest to war, to racism, to the destruction of the environment, I
realized that every word was just as relevant today as it was 40 years
ago.  Tears flooded down my face as an Asheville delegation of
Veterans for Peace staged the last scene in this version of Hair,
bringing in the flag-draped casket of the young hippie who got drafted
and killed in Vietnam.  I urged the incredibly talented young
director, Katie Kasben, to take the show on the road.  All America is
ready to renew those anthems of peace and  “let the sunshine in”!

Just as I remembered from the 1967 show, there were  “peace and love”
people outside the theater getting signatures on petitions and signing
people up for the bus ride to the next big peace march on Washingtron.
It’ll be on Saturday, September 24.  I plan to be there; I love the
smell of tear gas in the morning.