Hank Kalet

Studs Terkel: The voice of us all

Studs Terkel‘s books were about America. His method — to tape record interviews with average people (and sometimes famous ones) and then present their stories in their own words, unvarnished — produced what may be the richest and most significant oral history of the last century that anyone will use. His books — “Hard Times,” “Working,” “Hope Dies Last,” among them — made the trials and travails of the people affected by history into history, added flesh to the famous-person narratives we usually receive.

He died today, according to The New York Times, which offered a fine obituary:

In his oral histories, which he called guerrilla journalism, Studs Terkel relied on his enthusiastic but gentle interviewing style to elicit, in rich detail, the experiences and thoughts of ordinary Americans. “Division Street: America” (1966), his first best-seller and the first in a triptych of tape-recorded works, explored the urban conflicts of the 1960s. Its success led to “Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression”(1970) and “Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do”(1974). “ ‘The Good War’: An Oral History of World War II,” won the 1985 Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction.

In “Talking to Myself,” Mr. Terkel turned the microphone on himself to produce an engaging memoir, and more recently, in “Race: How Blacks and Whites Think and Feel About the American Obsession” (1992) and “Coming of Age: The Story of Our Century by Those Who’ve Lived It”(1995)’ he reached for his ever-present tape recorder for interviews on race relations in the United States and the experience of growing old.

Although detractors derided him as a sentimental populist whose views were simplistic and occasionally maudlin, Mr. Terkel was widely credited with transforming oral history into a popular literary form. In 1985 a reviewer for The Financial Times of London characterized Mr. Terkel’s books as “completely free of sociological claptrap, armchair revisionism and academic moralizing.”

The Times goes on to explain his particular gifts:

The elfin, amiable Mr. Terkel was a gifted and seemingly tireless interviewer who elicited provocative insights and colorful, detailed personal histories from a broad mix of people. “The thing I’m able to do, I guess, is break down walls,” he once told an interviewer. “If they think you’re listening, they’ll talk. It’s more of a conversation than an interview.”

Mr. Terkel’s succeeded as an interviewer in part because he believed most people had something to say worth hearing. “The average American has an indigenous intelligence, a native wit,” he said. “It’s only a question of piquing that intelligence.

In “American Dreams: Lost and Found” (1980), he interviewed police officers and convicts, nurses and loggers, former slaves and former Ku Klux Klansmen, a typical crowd for Mr. Terkel.

Readers of his books could only guess at Mr. Terkel’s interview style. Listeners to his daily radio show, which was broadcast on WFMT since 1958, got the full Terkel flavor, as the host, with breathy eagerness and a tough-guy Chicago accent, went after the straight dope from such guests as Sir Georg Solti ,Toni Morrison and Gloria
Steinem.

“It isn’t an inquisition, it’s an exploration, usually an exploration into the past,” he once said, explaining his approach. “So I think the gentlest question is the best one, and the gentlest is, ‘And what happened then?’”

His death is not a surprise — he was 96 — but it is a blow. May he rest in peace.

Devilish sounds from The Boss

Here is a note from Bruce Springsteen’s Web site announcing his little audio Halloween treat for fans:

A NIGHT WITH THE JERSEY DEVILDear Friends and Fans,If you grew up in central or south Jersey, you grew up with the “Jersey Devil.” Here’s a little musical Halloween treat. Have fun!Bruce Springsteen”A Night With The Jersey Devil”: Free Audio Download lyrics

It is a good tune, very bluesy and could have been sung on the acoustic, Devils and Dust tour.

A transformative experience

Joey, my nephew, had a little trouble walking in this Transformers costume, but I think he wins for best Constable School costume. But I'm just a little biased.

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The darkness in our souls

Stories like this are puzzling, not because the specifics make no sense — they unfortunately do — but because in the year 2008 in the United States there are still people who do harm to others for no other reason than racial, ethnicity, religion or sexual orientation.

I don’t mean to sound naive, or to come off as some pie-in-the-sky type, but what gives? Perhaps I am just more sensitive to these things than others, having been subjected to it while growing up. As a Jew, I have heard the slurs, some of them unconsciously offered by well-intentioned people. I remember a friend in high school telling me he could tell who was Jewish and who was not just by looking people. I remember getting into a fight with a friend, a Puerto Rican kid who lived down the street, just because he used one of the standard anti-Jewish pejoratives — which led me, in one of those moments that I can look back on in sorry and embarrassment, to call him some pretty nasty, ethnic-based names in return.

That was in the 1970s and one might think that we wouldn’t have to deal with this stuff anymore. And by we, I mean all of us. But the coded language used during this presidential campaign against Barack Obama — and not just by John McCain, Sarah Palin and the right wing, but by Hillary Clinton and her camp during the primaries — is just one very public example of how much work still needs to be done.

As is the way too many people speak when they are in what they might view as their comfort zones — among family and friends, for instance — the way whites they use the “n-word” around family members, the names they call Muslims, Hindus, Latinos, Jews, gays, or even Italians, the Irish and Poles. This kind of nastiness remains an epidemic, a festering wound that can only be cured by exposing it to light.

We’ve continued to allow this atmosphere to exist, an atmosphere that is conducive to the violence that has struck Carteret in recent weeks. We have a responsibility to change this atmosphere and make it unacceptable for this kind of nonsense to continue.

Thoughts on an economic meltdownand a rebirth of the New Deal

I know we’ve seen some upward bumps in the stock market in recent days, but the reality is they are anomalies and do not really give an accurate picture of the economy. News like this, however, does:

a government report released Thursday showed that the economy contracted in the third quarter as consumer spending dipped for the first time in 17 years.

Economists said the drop in economic activity — with the gross domestic product shrinking at a 0.3 percent annual rate — presages more bad news in the months ahead. The impacts of a now-global financial crisis are continuing to squeeze companies and impede investment, prompting more layoffs and another wave of austerity.

“The economy has taken a turn for the worse, big time,” said Allen Sinai, chief global economist for Decision Economics, a consulting and forecasting group. “Consumption literally caved in. It is a prelude to much worse news on the economy over the next couple of quarters. The fundamentals around the consumer are all negative, and there are no signs of any help anytime soon, from anywhere.”

The story continues:

Thursday’s government report showed that consumer spending — which makes up more than 70 percent of American economy activity — dipped at 3.1 percent annual rate between July and September, after growing at a 1.2 percent annual rate in the previous three months.

That was the largest three-month drop since the second quarter of 1980, a contraction that was in some sense artificial: the Carter administration, seeking to suffocate inflation, imposed limits on bank borrowing. Putting that episode aside, this year’s drop represents the sharpest decline in consumer spending since the end of 1974.

Floyd Norris, chief financial correspondent of The New York Times and The International Herald Tribune, wrote on his blog earlier today that “Consumers are clearly in retreat, and the economy is suffering,” with the nation’s gross domestic product increasing by its lowest amount for “any four-quarter period since 2001.”

Real personal consumption spending is estimated to have fallen a tiny bit (0.04 percent) over the four-quarter period. That is the first decline for that segment since 1991.

Another number worth noting is final sales to domestic purchasers, whether businesses, consumers or governments. That leaves out gains from exports, and it ignores changes in business inventories. It is down 0.1 percent on a year-over-year basis. Again, that is the first decline since 1991.

This recession, in other words, is already deeper than the 2001 downturn. And there are clear signs it is, or soon will be, worse than the 1990-91 recession as well.

If only consumer purchases were counted in G.D.P., it would have fallen at a 3.1 percent annual rate in the quarter. That is the worst quarterly performance in that regard since the second quarter of 1980. Then, in a desperate attempt to control inflation, the Fed imposed credit controls. Now we have credit controls imposed despite every attempt by the Fed to stimulate the economy.

A partial solution to what is happening may be contained in the numbers. Norris says that government spending kept the “overall quarterly decline … small” because it “added 1.1 percent to the growth rate.” Other factors — nonresidential construction and net exports — also helped, but neither are expected to keep up.

Government spending may be the key to keeping us from falling from a deep recession into a depression, but it will take a massive infusion of cash into state and local budgets, along with federal spending to jump start things.

That’s the point Govs. Jon Corzine and David Paterson made yesterday (see my post) and that the Star-Ledger made today in an editorial. Sending checks to taxpayers, which may have some political benefit, does little to prime the pump; what works best, as the Ledger writes, is public works projects and spending on healthcare.

The first economic stimulus plan — not to be confused with the recent $700 billion bailout constructed for the financial market — consisted primarily of sending checks to taxpayers over the summer. Now Congress is talking about another round. We agree with Corzine: Directing federal funds into infrastructure is the best way to stimulate the economy on a long-term basis. Creating jobs is preferable to another one- shot jolt that won’t last after the month’s bills are paid.

New York Gov. David Paterson asked Congress to increase the federal portion of Medicaid, the health program for the poor. Paterson appealed for more direct aid to states. The cash that Paterson asked for will be needed as states like New Jersey and New York struggle against projected multibillion-dollar deficits. As credit tightens, as layoffs increase and tax revenues dwindle, more citizens will need help that the states will be hard- pressed to provide.

Paterson’s plea has merit. But so does Corzine’s.

If there is going to be a new economic stimulus package, investing in infrastructure projects — with at least $300 billion, Corzine says — will quickly provide jobs and kick-start the economy in ways that will deliver long-lasting benefits.

It’s not about “make-work” projects (the Ledger’s phrase) — though, those may become necessary at some point — but about “making up for the infrastructure needs that have been left untended, and dangerously so, for far too long.”

We’re talking about road and bridge repairs, mass-transit expansion, new schools and libraries, broadband installation in areas not currently served and investments in green technologies. All of these things cost money, but all of them also put people to work and some will create new industries that will serve the nation well into the future.

The nation, unfortunately, has been mired in an intellectual morass, its political, financial and media elites wed to old ideas, to a conventional wisdom that appears to be in flux. People may still be skeptical of the government, but I sense that they are less skeptical of government than “the government” and that they have learned over the last eight years what happens when you let government atrophy and that a vibrant, well-functioning public sector is not only important but necessary for our health and well-being.

They are, I think, interested in a kind of Rooseveltian rebirth of the public sector, one that acts as a watchdog over the corporate order, provides a safety net for those who fall on hard times and steps in when the system is failing.

Roosevelt put people to work, but he also electrified the Tennessee Valley. He got the Hoover Damn built and hundreds and thousands of smaller projects (the Princeton Arts Council building was a WPA project). Government gave us the railroads, the highway system, bridges, tunnels — well, you get the picture.

It can do the same now, if we only let it.