Howard Jacobson Quotes
If something or someone is being banned, I want to be among the first to know about it.
Jacobson, Howard. Whatever It Is, I Don't Like It. Bloomsbury, 2011.
What oven gets overlooked in the history leading up to the Civil War was the terribly repressive atmosphere that developed in the South itself over the issue of slavery. There were some abolitionists in the South, and most of the slaves were held by a relatively few wealthy men. Many with no slaves or only one or two, might go either way on the slavery issue and the various fugitive slave laws. And Northern abolitionists sometimes would come South to investigate and report on the conditions of the slaves of the South. While still in the Union, many Southern areas made a mockery of the Constitutional protections of freedom of speech, freedom of the press. Censorship and repressive activities invaded privacy, and the South, for both Northerners and English travelers, no longer had the charm of the past. Note the use of the term “reign of terror”. Bunch was a seasoned diplomat experienced at reporting on conditions.
Licensing of the press is
The George W. Bush administration was a very ideological one as opposed to pragmatic. They would not tolerate public officials who would say anything that might undermine an administrative ideological position. In particular, they did not want government scientists releasing any data or information that was not totally consistent with their ideology and program. They introduced a new policy within the government whereby no one could talk to a reporter or make a public speech or deliver a professional paper without first getting approval of administration “public affairs” agents first. Government scientists and other officials had never before been censored like this. Important scientific studies were not made public where they might not support the administration ideological positions. Hanson spoke out against the policy at great embarrassment to the administration. See {614691}.
The “burning” is a reference to the range of murders from the burning of heretics in the Middle Ages to the crematorium ovens of the German Concentration Camps in the Holocaust of WWII.
Howard Eric Jacobson is a British novelist and journalist. He is known for writing comic novels that often revolve around the dilemmas of British Jewish characters. He is a Man Booker Prize winner.
