Southern Bookman

LSU historian Robert Mann's "Kingfish U" tells engrossing story of Huey Long's crushing love for LSU

LSU's band, football team and academic prestige rose under Huey Long's autocratic control of Louisiana during the dark years of the Depression.

After Long's assassination in 1935, the "Ole War Skule's" golden era crashed in scandal, leading to the imprisonment of LSU President James Monroe Smith and other university officials for a range of fraudulent schemes.

The wide-ranging federal and state investigations also led to the conviction of Gov. Richard Leche, for whom the university's law school had been named. His name was abruptly removed from the school's monumental building.

Long as governor and U.S. senator who still controlled the state embraced LSU like a smothering sugar daddy. He lavished money on school buildings, launched a medical school, and outrageously championed the school's band and football team.

LSU professor and noted historian Robert Mann entertainingly tells the story of Long and his proudest achievement in "Kingfish U: Huey Long and LSU," published by LSU Press.

An outlandish political showman, Long took trainloads of LSU students to football games in Nashville and Houston, leading the band on parades through the cities' downtowns. He also enjoyed giving pep talks to the football team, although Coach Biff Jones banned "the Kingfish" from the locker room before Long fired the former Army officer.

Rapidly increasing its student body and constructing new buildings after a move from downtown Baton Rouge to a bucolic new campus that had once been a plantation on the Mississippi River, LSU attracted nationally recognized professors, most prominently Robert Penn Warren and Cleanth Brooks, editors of the university's prestigious and ground=breaking Southern Review.

As Mann relates, Long generally kept his hands off academic matters. But he brought his beloved university national comdemnation for attempting to censor the Daily Reveille, the school's student newspaper, after it published a letter criticizing his iron-fisted control of the LSU Board of Supervisors.

Smith's expulsion of seven Reveille journalists brought an investigation by the Southern Association of  Colleges and Secondary Schools. The organization placed LSU on probation, then dropped its investigation when the school affirmed its commitment to academic independence following Long's death.

But Long's meddling with the LSU Law School led to censure by the Association of American Law Schools, a minor part of a ballooning scandal that engulfed the university and Long's machine following his assassination in a hallway of his soaring state Capitol in downtown Baton Rouge.

Mann gives a complete account of the scandals, especially the involvement of Leche, Smith and a number of LSU officials who used LSU material and state funds for personal projects.

Smith, who led the university's flourishing during the Depression and originated the Southern Review, ended up serving six years in the state penitentiary at Angola.

Long, one of the most divisive leaders in American history, gave his poverty-stricken state modern roads, schools and hospitals and propelled a small state university to national prominence.

Mocked by national writers for his clownish behavior and accumulation of power, Long before his death gained a national following for his "share our wealth" programs, which still appear radical.

Mann gives a balanced picture of a politician beloved by Louisiana's long-exploited poor. As Mann details, blacks gained little from his programs.

The book contains wonderful vintage photographs of Long, decked out in three-piece suits and fedoras, acting as chief cheerleader. He's shown with the band and students, or huddling with cronies. One picture shows Smith with several cows; rural students during the Depression could pay for their tuition with livestock or crops.

While Mann praises Long's accomplishments, he presents a disturbing picture of Long's schemes to acquire more power.

Long's flamboyant career was in the end tragic, as Robert Penn Warren mined in his classic novel"All the King's Men."

Warren found in Baton Rouge "a world of a sick yearning for elegance."

Louisiana's dreams of greatness come mixed with corruption and buffoonery.

 

 

 

 

Washington Post journalists on strike for a day

Washington Post journalists on a 24-hour strike Thursday asked readers to not look at the newspaper's web site and print edition, which company executives are producing.

While I sympathize with the newsroom workers, I'm uncomfortable with what appears close to prior restraint, a government action that the Post and The New York Times opposed in the Pentagon Papers case.

The walkout is the newspaper's first since 1975, when the late publisher Katharine Graham battled a violent strike by printing plant workers opposed to new technology.

Graham, who supported editor Ben Bradlee when the newspaper achieved national prominence with its Watergate reporting, had no inkling that the Internet in a few years would devastate the Post, leading to her family selling the paper to Amazon billionaire Jeff Bezos.

While The Post initially flourished under Bezos' rule and the editorship of Marty Baron, the media company now suffers losses expected to reach $100 million this year.

Striking reporters, editors and advertising workers accuse the company of bad faith in contract negotiations, which have dragged on for 18 months.

The Newspaper Guild seeks a minimum salary of $101,000, while the company offers $73,000. That's pretty paltry, considering Bezos' extreme wealth.

Another contentious issue is the staff buyouts recently announced by the company to reduce staff. The guild claims the company is pressuring workers to take the buyouts, with threats of layoffs.

Recently named Post Publisher William Lewis, a former Wall Street Journal executive, promises a Post renaissance when he takes over Jan. 2.

But he told staffers in an introductory meeting that he supports the buyouts. He'll take charge of an increasingly bitter staff, which has lost confidence in Sally Buzbee, Baron's replacement. 

While upper management takes the front lines for a day, striking journalists tell readers to look elsewhere for the news.

 

 

 

Julian Jackson's "France on Trial: The Case of Marshal Petain" examines democratic perils

In one of France's worst moments, World War I hero Philippe Petain shook hands with German dictator Adolph Hitler on Oct. 24, 1940.

Addressing the French nation a few days later, Marshal Petain exclaimed "I enter today down the road of collaboration."

Petain, who had witnessed the surrender of Germany to end World War I, was chosen by Hitler's Nazi regime to lead France's puppet Vichy government, which ostensibly ruled a part of France not occupied by the Germans.

After Hitler's downfall and the end of World War II, liberated France under the leadership of Charles de Gaulle tried the 89-year-old Petain and other Vichy collaborators on charges of treason.

British historian Julian Jackson's critically acclaimed "France on Trial: The Case of Marshal Petain" examines the trial, in which Petain was sentenced to death. De Gaulle, his former close friend, commuted the sentence to life imprisonment, and Petain was held prisoner on a small island, where he died in 1951.

As the title indicates, Jackson's book explores how Petain's collaboration with Germany implicated the entire country. After the war's end, France's resistance movement began a wave of harsh punishment for collaborators, including killings.

Petain claimed that he was a "shield" for France, saving it from the more extreme Nazi occupation suffered by Poland and other countries.

The Vichy regime repealed France's liberal laws, restoring a pro-Catholic conservatism. France's right-wing political groups until recently extolled Petain as a national hero.

Under Petain, French Jewish citizens were captured and sent to Nazi camps, although at a lower percentage than in other countries, likely because of the success of the resistance movement in protecting Jews. Jackson documents that the Vichy government independently acted against Jewish citizens as much as from German coercion.

Jackson has written a series of definitive histories of France's World War II experience and its aftermath, including a highly praised biography of de Gaulle ,who led France after World War II and returned to power as head of the Fifth Republic from the late 1950s through 1969.

"France on Trial," published by Harvard University Press in August, is a major work that holds deep lessons for the United States and its imperiled democracy.

Henry Kissinger's death reflects divisiveness of his foreign policy actions

Henry Kissinger established the world order that's crashing today.

Kissinger, who dominated global politics as Richard Nixon's national security adviser and secretary of state, died Wednesday at age 100.

Reactions to his death ranged from human rights advocates who consider him one of  history's worst war criminals to members of America's foreign policy establishment who hailed him as master statesman defending U.S. power.

As Nixon's consigliere, Kissinger with his heavy German accent, dark-framed glasses and raptor's beak acted as the grand puppet master of global events. His "shuttle diplomacy" established the United States as the main power broker in the Mideast.

Disrupting the communist-capitalist stalemate, Kissinger engineered Nixon's ground-breaking trip to China, spurring the communist country's emergence as the United States' major economic partner and rival. Chinese President Xi Jinping's repressive regime has raised conflicts to Cold War levels.

In countering Soviet power in the Mideast and elsewhere, Kissinger set the clock ticking on the communist empire's demise. Peaceful relations with Russia following the end of the Cold War have steadily worsened during Vladimir Putin's reign, collapsing with Putin's invasion of Ukraine.

Kissinger's achievements came with a heavy cost of blood. His "realpolitik" machinations led to the murder of millions in Cambodia, Vietnam, Pakistan, Angola, Chile, East Timor and the Mideast. 

Leaving office after the election of Jimmy Carter in 1976, Kissinger enhanced his reputation by writing his memoirs and other books, giving speeches and advising leaders as a foreign policy consultant.

Ironically, Kissinger's death followed that of New Orleans singer Jean Knight, known for her hit "Mr. Big Stuff."

Countries across the world ravaged by Kissinger's policies would echo Knight's refrain, "Mr. Big Stuff, who do you think you are?"

 

 

N+1 literary journal offers in-depth examination of "Stop Cop City" protest

A comprehensive, week-by-week account of the "Stop Cop City" protest appears in the current issue of the literary journal "N+1"

The lengthy "Not One Tree" by Grace Glass and Sasha Tycho is written from the point-of-view of protesters against the $90 million police training center, now about 40 percent complete in a forested area in DeKalb County despite a petition to submit the project to Atlanta voters. 

Yet the article displays impressive objectivity. Generally sympathetic to the disparate crew of Marxists, anarchists, environmentalists and neo-hippies who joined the protest from around the country, Glass and Tycho doubt the effectiveness of vandalism and violent tactics. They also give amusing vignettes of petty quarrels among the forest dwellers.

The disclosure that Grace Glass is a pseudonym damages the author's credibility. Her partner is a graduate student at Emory, according to a Google search.

Glass and Tycho display a strongknowledge of Atlanta history and politics, giving a detailed history of the Atlanta prison farm located at the site in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

They also see the support of the training center by Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens and th Atlanta City Council as the latest manifestation of the "Atlanta Way," the cooperation between black political leaders and white business executives long venerated in the city.

The piece builds to a dramatic and chilling climax with the police killing of protester Manuel Paez Teran, shot at least 57 times, according to an autopsy.

Six Georgia State Patrol officers involved in the shooting were not charged following an investigation by the Stone Mountain Circuit District Attorney's office.

A postscript cites the indictment of 61 people in connection with the protests under the state's "RICO" anti-racketeering law. Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr in announcing the indictments called the defendants "militant anarchists."

The N+! article makes a valuable contribution to the training center debate, as construction presses forward.

 

 

Holiday season arrives with world in flame

"Oh Little Town of Bethlehem" will sound grimly ironic this year.

The brutal wars in Israel and Ukraine depress the holiday spirit.

Each moment, people are slaughtered, numbers instead of names.

Here in Atlanta, I read the names of murder victims each morning in the newspaper. A young middle school teacher was killed the other day downtown.

Violence rages between police and opponents of Atlanta's police training center. Although Atlanta is building the $90 million project, law enforcement agencies from various jurisdictions are combating protesters. This has escalated into a guerrilla war.

That old Simon and Garfunkel recording of "Silent Night" juxtaposed with reports from the Vietnam War seems prophetic. Wars never cease.

As the world burns, families will gather for Thanksgiving feasts next week, and Christmas lights will glow.

Once again, choirs will sing "yet in thy dark streets shineth, the everlasting light, the hopes and fears of all the years, are met in thee tonight."

 

Jimbo Fisher, Kathleen McElroy settlements show skewed priorities at Texas A&M

Fired Texas A&M football coach Jimbo Fisher will receive a reported $77 million buyout, paid for by wealthy boosters and the school's athletics department.

In contrast, journalism professor Kathleen O. McElroy recently agreed to a $1 million settlement from A&M after the school backed away from hiring McElroy to lead a new journalism program.

Conservative A&M alums, many of whom likely will help pay for Fisher's record-breaking buyout, objected to McElroy's appointment because of her support of diversity, equity and inclusion programs and her 20-year-career at The New York Times, according to media reports.

After the conservative backlash, A&M watered down its offer to McElroy, at last reducing the terms to a 1-year, non-tenured position.

An A&M alum, McElroy rejected the insulting offer, remaining a tenured professor at the University of Texas. 

An investigation into the bungled hiring led to the $1 million settlement and the retirement of former University President Kathleen Banks. School officials also apologized to McElroy.

One wealthy alum who scuttled McElroy's appointment said the journalism department should produce journalists with conservative values who would advocate for the school, rather than carry out objective reporting.

A&M hired Fisher in 2017 with great fanfare, luring him away from Florida State with a 10-year, $75 million contract. In 2021, the school extended Fisher's deal through the 2031 season, increasing his annual salary to more than $9 million.

Fisher coached Florida State to the 2013 national championship, but outside of a 9-1 record and a No. 4 ranking in the Covid-hampered 2020 season, he's fielded mediocre Aggies teams, despite highly ranked recruiting classes.

A&M Athletics Director Ross Bjork on Sunday night said he decided to fire Fisher with two games remaining in the 2023 season because the program is "stuck in neutral."

Bjork said the school's 12th Man Foundation and the athletics department will finance Fisher's settlement, which will pay him $7.2 million annually through 2031.

While A&M boasts of its academic excellence, the huge outlay for Fisher compared with McElroy's settlement indicates that football is the school's top priority.

 

 

New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman gives invaluable insights on Israeli-Palestinian conflict

New York Times international columnist Thomas Friedman is giving the best perspectives on the Israeli-Hamas warfare.

Friedman, who won two Pulitzer Prizes for his Mideast reporting in the 1980s, is the most knowledgeable American journalist about the Israel-Palestinian conflict and the broader context of Iran's involvement through proxies such as Hezbollah, now threatening to attack Israel from Lebanon.

In his latest column, "First Came the Six-Day War, Now It's the Six-Front War," presents a broad analysis of the conflict, looking at Israeli and Palestinian politics, the nefarious activities of Iran and the need for Israel to build global support outside of the United States.

Continuing his criticism of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's move to the right and encouragement of increased Israeli settlements in the West Bank, Friedman says "If Israel is asking its best allies to help the Jewish state seek justice in Gaza while asking them to look the other way as Israel builds a settlement kingdom in the West Bank with the express goal of annexation, that is strategically and morally incoherent."

In earlier columns, Friedman opposed an Israeli excursion into Gaza to destroy Hamas, which controls the densely populated sliver of land.

Friedman harshly condemns Hamas for attacking Israel rather than alleviating the poverty of Palestinians living in Gaza. "It is terrifying to see how many resources Hamas diverted to build weapons rather than to aid Gaza's human capital - and how effectively it hid that from Israel and the world," he says in Friday's far-ranging column.

Iran draws Friedman's blame for stirring up hostilities through its control of the Arab states of Lebanon, Syria, Yemen and Iraq. Friedman discloses that the Iranian proxies have recently been attacking American forces in the region.

Friedman also castigates American college students for anti-Israeli demonstrations that "essentially blame Israel for the barbaric Hamas invasion, arguing that Hamas is engaged in a legitimate 'anticolonial  struggle.'''

"To reduce this incredibly complex struggle of two peoples for the same land to a colonial war is to commit intellectual fraud," he thunders.

Reiterating his commitment to a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict ,Friedman calls upon Netanyahu to seek international support by halting Israeli settlements in the West Bank and reaching agreement with the more moderate Palestinian Authority, which controls Palestinian West Bank communities.

In columns worthy of a fourth Pulitzer Prize, Friedman is providing essential commentary on the Israeli-Hamas war.

 

LSU professor Robert Mann resigns after right-wing agitator Jeff Landry elected as Louisiana's governor

LSU journalism professor Robert Mann will resign after the election of right-wing firebrand Jeff Landry as Louisiana's governor.

“My reasons are simple,” Mann said in a Sunday tweet. “The person who will be governor in January has already asked LSU to fire me. And I have no confidence the leadership of this university would protect the Manship School against a governor’s efforts to punish me and other faculty members.”

A professor at LSU's Manship School of Mass Communications for 18 years, Mann is an outspoken critic of the state's support for football and other sports to the detriment of academics.

Mann, who has previously clashed with Louisiana's attorney general, said he made the decision in anticipation that Landry will seek his removal. In response, the school's administration issued a statement asserting its support of freedom of speech and academic independence.

The tenured holder of the Manship Chair in Journalism, Mann said that he took the action because of his deep love for the university and that he wanted to spare the school and faculty members from possible political retribution.

Endorsed by former President Donald Trump, Landry won the governorship Saturday, surprising political observers by receiving 52 percent of the vote in the state's "jungle primary" to avoid a runoff.

As the state's attorney general for two terms, Landry fought Covid vaccine mandates, supported the state's harsh anti-abortion legislation and bans against gender care for trans youth, and joined a lawsuit in support of Trump's false claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. He frequently fought Democratic Gov. John Bel Edwards, who is stepping down after eight years because of the state's term limit.

The professor battled Landry in December 2021 when Mann sponsored a resolution before the LSU faculty Senate calling for the university to follow Covid mandates for the testing of students.

An incensed Landry dispatched Assistant Attorney General Lauryn Sudduth to the governing body to read a letter opposing the mandates.

When Mann in a Twitter tweet assailed Landry for sending "a flunky" to the school, Landry demanded that LSU President William F. Tate IV take punitive action against Mann.

Tate relatedly issued a statement supporting Mann and academic freedom, but Mann considered it tentative, faulting Tate for not calling him directly to assure him that the administration "had his back."

Before coming to LSU, Mann served as an aide to Sens. John Breaux and Russell Long and Gov. Kathleen Blanco. A former reporter, Mann is a noted historian and political scientist who has written several well-regarded books.

He understands well the state's history of governors meddling with the university. Last year, LSU Press published Mann's "Kingfish U: Huey Long and LSU," which disclosed how Long sought to control the university and used the football team and band for his political advantage

As publisher of the Baton Rouge State Times and Morning Advocate, the Manship family opposed Long's regime, winning an important First Amendment ruling against the Kingfish in the U.S. Supreme Court. The benefactors of the LSU journalism school also stood out in the South for their support of integration.

Mann, who as a columnist for the then Times Picayune blasted former Gov. Bobby Jindal for severely cutting LSU's funding and who recently assailed the state's Legislature for refusing to fund a sorely needed new library, vows to keep speaking out when he leaves the university.

Louisiana needs his voice as Landry plans to turn the state into an even more repressive right-wing bastion.

 

 

New Yorker writer John McPhee recalls 60-year friendship with Bill Bradley

John McPhee's "A Sense of Where You Are: Bill Bradley at Princeton" enlightened my high school years.

The New Yorker writer's first of many books looked at Bradley's All-American basketball career at Princeton, which he led to the Final Four in 1965.

McPhee, a city of Princeton native whose father was the Tigers' team physician and who has taught a heralded writing class at the Ivy League school for years, first met Bradley in 1964 when Bradley was a high-scoring forward for the Tigers.

That began an enduring friendship, which the 92-year-old McPhee recounts in the New Yorker's current issue.

The writer recalls his relationship with Bradley during his years playing for the New York Knicks, in which the team won two NBA championships, and as a U.S. senator representing New Jersey. Bradley also was a Rhodes scholar before beginning his pro career and played on a U.S. team that won an Olympics gold medal.

Bradley wrote several books during his years in the Senate, emerging as one of the Democratic Party's brightest stars. His presidential ambitions came to naught, a sad loss for the country.

In the profile, McPhee cites Bradley's remarkable peripheral vision. He also possessed extraordinary political vision.

McPhee, who says in the profile that he and Bradley are as close as brothers, shows the great athlete and political leader's human qualities, disclosing several comic moments.

Bradley, seen as too cerebral to win the presidency, would have been a great leader for the country.

 

 

Mavis Gallant's "Paris Notebooks" gives enduring portrait of French life

Another gift for readers has arrived this fall: The re-release of Mavis Gallant's "Paris Notebooks."

Gallant, a Montreal native who moved to Paris in 1950 and died in 2014, is best known for her incisive short stories, published by The New Yorker.

She was also an intrepid journalist, reporting on French life for the magazine with dispatches as insightful as those of Janet Flanner, the New Yorker's longtime Paris correspondent.

Along with journalism and short stories, Gallant wrote witty and perceptive book reviews regarding  Vladimir Nabokov, Gunter Grass, Simone de Beauvoir, Jean Paul Sartre, Colette  Marguerite Yourcenar, Louis -Ferdinand Celine and the now lesser known Paul Leautaud and Jean Giraudoux.

First published in 1986, "Paris Notebooks" collects Gallant's reporting, literary reviews and journal entries. The new paperback edition published by Godine Nonpareil books comes with a foreword by biographer and critic Hermoine Lee, who calls Gallant "an impeccable transcriber of French life for North American readers."

The centerpiece of the collection is Gallant's on the scene diary of May 1968, when a student revolt spread to Parisian blue-collar workers and brought a violent crackdown by the French government. Gallant fearlessly witnessed the conflicts, even patrolling the streets at night.

Monitoring media reports and talking to friends and strangers, she compiled a comprehensive record of the crisis that shook French society to its foundations. Gallant's vivid account reclaims the historical significance of then worldwide important events.

Gallant's writing brings back the urgency of that Paris spring, and the daily vibrancy of French life.