Writing in the Margins

What's hot in indie publishing, from Greg Palast's anti-Dubya card deck to a coffee-table book of antiwar art and a photographic study of NYC's back-in-the-day graffiti writers. Plus: The '80s punk hero who's been forgotten but shouldn't be.

By Scott Thill

Aug 4, 2004 | Man, it must be summer, because it's getting freakin' hot in here. Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" colossus has turned up the heat on the Iraq oil grab, as well as the Bush administration's shady deals with the bin Laden family, James Bath and the Saudi royals. It's old news to most earnest lefties and the world at large, but still -- cue Claude Rains from "Casablanca" -- shocking news to the rest of America.

Meanwhile, the Republicans have responded by trotting out a policy Old Faithful -- the criminalization of homosexuals -- and trying to pass off criticism of their botched reign as, no lie, "pessimism." Talk about a loser's strategy; I haven't seen anything as hilarious as that since Lakers coach Phil Jackson inserted Slava Medvedenko into the NBA Finals in hopes of stopping the Pistons juggernaut.

But does the left (and middle) need to tear down Ralph Nader, a guy who has spent his entire life championing the disadvantaged and dispossessed, to compensate for its own self-made shortcomings? Look, the guy might be getting money from right-wingers and/or suspicious donors, but that would put him entirely in line with the rest of America's political machine. To argue that he must hold himself to a higher standard just to get his name on a ballot with the Republicrats is hypocrisy. Let's not be Pollyanna about this -- politics is a dirty game, as Nader has proven over the decades. Let's just suck it up and move on.

At least Nader is still trumpeting (albeit self-importantly) for truth, fairness and justice. In contrast, John Kerry voted for the Iraqmire on feeble proof -- along with the rest of the Democrats not named Kucinich -- and still can't summon up enough courage to publicly state that gays have the right to marry whoever the hell they want, wherever the hell they want. C'mon man! Democrats are supposed to believe in something else other than the notion that a populist wonk named Ralph, who'll barely be able to command 1 percent, will ruin their election chances against the worst president this country has ever seen. If Bush wins this election, the Demos will have only themselves to blame, just like in 2000. Was anyone even watching the beginning of "Fahrenehit 9/11," where a neutered Al Gore buried himself with his own gavel?

I don't know what the lines in Vegas are at this late stage, but my money's on a new president in the White House, Nader or no. Speaking of, let's get political:

"The Joker's Wild: Dubya's Trick Deck"
By Greg Palast
Illustrations by Robert Grossman
52 pages
Seven Stories Press
Order from Powells.com

Speaking of "Fahrenheit 9/11," most of the evidence that African-Americans were vote-jacked in Florida in 2000 -- a tragedy ignored by Gore until it was too late, as Moore's film illustrates -- came from the tireless efforts of individuals like Greg Palast, an investigative reporter who's also responsible for bringing some of America's most egregious scams to light. Early reporting on the Exxon Valdez drive-by on Prince William Sound? The greed-is-good Enron shell game in Texas and Cali? Bush's buddy-up with Bath, the bin Ladens and the Saudis? That would be Palast stirring the shit, long before anyone else cared.

Now he's taken some of the not-so-beautiful losers found at length in his bestselling "The Best Democracy Money Can Buy" -- reissued in April with new information on Florida's plans to screw the same people again in 2004 -- and assembled them for a deck of cards not unlike the one Rumsfeld concocted for his Project for the New American Century pipe dream in Iraq. The usual suspects are here, resplendent in caricature courtesy of Robert Grossman, the mightier-than-the-sword pen for the Nation, the New York Times and others. Grossman-Palast make a formidable tag-team against Bush-Cheney; I'd like to watch them square off against each other with chairs in the WWE someday. Until then, this hilarious stack should do the trick.

Next Page: "These are the landlords of your planet. Some of them are of course fictional -- like Tom Brokaw"

• View blog reactions