Tom Engelhardt

Interview met de vooraanstaande onafhankelijke Amerikaanse publicist Tom Engelhardt van TomDispatch: Part I Tom Engelhardt: Reading the Imperial Press Back to Front.

Nick Turse stands at the door, a frizz of curly black hair, a fringe of beard, in a dark T-shirt and green cargo pants. Slung over his shoulder is a green backpack (a water bottle sticking out of a side pouch) so stuffed that he might well have been on a week's maneuvers. When I mention its size, he says, "Genuine military surplus," smiles, and lets it drop to the floor with a thunk. Immediately, he begins rummaging inside it and soon pulls out a tiny box sporting drawings of futuristic robot warriors and covered with Japanese characters (but also with a tiny "Made in China" in English). "Knowing your tastes," he says, handing it to me. He found it at a toy store in Tokyo on his way back from Vietnam.
Young as he is, he's been in the government archives for years and is one of our foremost experts on American war crimes in Vietnam. In fact, the combination of historic crimes and toys first brought us together at a diner a block from my apartment, perhaps three years ago. I had written a book, in part on Vietnam, in part on how an American "victory culture" had once expressed itself in the world of children's play. He read it and was looking for a little advice on his work. Soon after, he began sending out to friends his own homespun version of Tomdispatch and put me on his e-list.
Overwhelmed by such send-outs, I ignored his for a while, but he had such an eye for the place where toys, entertainment, and the military-industrial complex merged that I finally found myself paying attention, and one day called, asking if he would write a Tomgram on the subject. The rest, as they say, is Tomdispatch history. Now, in a busy life that includes writing two books and working a couple of jobs, he spends his spare time as the site's associate editor and research director - I may not have much money to offer but titles are plentiful - and has become one of its more popular writers.
As we walk into the dining room, reviewing our past history, he says wryly, "You found me in the cabbage patch." For a brief moment, at the dining room table, we're both absorbed in preparations. Cellophane wrappers come off tapes that are clicked into tape recorders. Then we seat ourselves and, for the first time since I began these interviews, I swivel my two machines so they face me.
Outside, on this late spring Sunday, the sky has darkened and rain is beginning to fall. Nick says into his tape - he's the pro here, having interviewed many vets from the Vietnam era - "May 21, 2006, Turse Interview with Tom Engelhardt… " And when I give him a quizzical look, he adds, "I don't know how many tapes I've gone through and then thought: Who was I interviewing? Who is this guy?" Who is this guy turns out to be the theme of the afternoon.
Nick Turse: Was there some eureka moment when you created Tomdispatch?
Tom Engelhardt: It was more an endless moment - those couple of months after 9/11 when, for a guy who was supposedly politically sophisticated, my reactions were naïve as hell. I had this feeling that the horror of the event might somehow open us up to the world. It was dismaying to discover that, with the Bush administration's help, we shut the world out instead. What we engaged in were endless, repetitive rites that elevated us to the roles of greatest survivor, greatest dominator, and greatest victim, all the roles in the global drama except greatest evil one.
I'm also a lifetime newspaper junkie. I just couldn't bear the narrowness and conformity of the coverage when I knew that this had been a shocking event, but that there was also a history to 9/11. It only seemed to come out of the blue. I was a book editor by profession. I had published Chalmers Johnson's prophetic Blowback two years earlier. I became intensely frustrated with the limited voices we were hearing.
At the same time, watching the Bush administration operate, I became increasingly appalled. [There's a thunderclap outside.] Maybe it's dramatic license to have thunder booming in the background now.
Look, I had been at the edges of the mainstream publishing world for almost thirty years and I'd done useful work. I had nothing to be embarrassed about. I also had two reasonably grown-up kids and, looking at the world in perhaps early November 2001, I had an overwhelming feeling - maybe this was the eureka moment, though it crept up on me - that I couldn't simply go on as is. We're egocentric beings. We tend to move out from the self. Children are next, then spouse, friends, relatives, your city, your nation, the world. I couldn't bear to turn this world over to my children in this shape. I had no illusions about what I could do. I wasn't imagining Tomdispatch. I just felt I had to make a gesture.' Lees verder:
http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=93779 Of: http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/062106P.shtml

Part II Tom Englehardt: On Not Packing Your Bag and Heading Home When Things Go Wrong
NT: The site has become home to diverse voices. What makes a Tomdispatch writer? Is there a defining trait you're looking for?
TE: I can only explain this with an image. When I was young, we kids would go hunting for clams with our toes. The question naturally was: How do you know what a clam feels like? Of course, nobody can tell you. You just feel around until, amid the empty shells, stones, and live crabs sooner or later you hit a clam. Then you know.
Ditto Tomdispatch writers. Ditto how I operate in life. Many Tomdispatch writers I already knew. I had edited their books. Tomdispatch is a non-submission site, because I'm the only one answering the mail and I'm usually working another job or two. I just can't deal.
The real adventure of my site, by the way, is all those e-letters pouring in. This wows me. I check the site e-mail and there's a convoy commander from Iraq telling me about his experiences, or an anti-imperial conservative from some southern state, or residents of small towns all over America.
In the nineteenth century, people fled small towns for the big city. Now, when they feel isolated, they flee onto the Internet looking for company. So I get letters regularly from people who sign off with the name of a town in Kansas or Montana or Texas, and in parentheses maybe, "pop. 250." Sometimes, they'll add something like: "From Red State Hell." Wonderful letters from people I would never in a million years meet: Iraqi exiles, Germans who want to tell me about our President, an American ex-pat in Athens who let me know that a Greek college student had recommended the site to him. Imagine that!
I try to reply to everything, at least a few words. But every now and then I get an e-letter where I just go: Wow, I have to do something with this! So here's an example of how a Tomdispatch writer got started. Elizabeth de la Vega had just retired as a federal prosecutor when she wrote in. She had a few kind words about the site, but mainly she wanted to offer some comments on a piece I had posted on the Plame case. Well, I doubt I had gotten a letter from a federal prosecutor before, and her Plame comments were riveting.' Lees verder:
http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=94587 Of: http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/062306O.shtml