An Edge in My Voice

by Harlan Ellison

  Because she is, and was, shy, polite and decent, Kathy Merrick was bewildered. She had never come up against the specter of censorship before. Still reeking of blood from the Spanish Inquisition, the Scopes Monkey Trial and McCarthyism, the specter threw its shadow over Winifred, Montana and, as always, its victim was someone too innocent to mount a counterattack as ruthless as the demented accusations leveled in the name of “Decency, God and Country.”

  She appealed to the school board. The Billings, Montana papers picked it up. The Montana Association of Teachers of English tried to come to her aid, as did the Montana Education Association and the American Civil Liberties Union. She wrote me, and I wanted to be on the next plane, to appear before the kangaroo court. But they sent word I would not be permitted to speak, nor were any of the amicus groups allowed to speak. So, like Peter Zenger and Galileo and Giordano Bruno and Arthur Miller and Lillian Hellman before her, young Kathy Merrick made her appeal to the unfinished minds of the Winifred school board. To those God-fearing, bible-spouting, righteously sanctimonious church-goers, smugly swaddled in their Christian charity to the full measure of their nasty, mingy burnt-toast heathen souls.

  Life is tightfisted when it comes to dispensing happy endings.

  Kathy Merrick was fired. Her teaching credential was tainted in Montana. She was forced to move out of town. For six years a woman who wanted to open doors for children had to wait tables to support herself.

  In 1980 she married Happy Jack and this year she gritted her teeth and decided she was not going to let the Pod People keep her from her true purposes. She and Happy Jack live in Fairfield, near Great Falls, and she is teaching again.

  But her innocence is gone.

  On Tuesday, October 5th, I was invited to a screening of a half-hour documentary on The Moral Majority, produced by People For The American Way, an organization I’ve mentioned in these pages previously as the only streetwise outfit, on-line in Washington, D.C., that is fighting back against these grim reapers. The film is called “Life and Liberty…For All Who Believe.”

  It is one of the most terrifying half hours of television you will ever see. And see it you will, tomorrow night, Friday, October 22, 8:30 PM on Channel 11. It cost $35,692 to buy that half hour.

  See children throwing books onto flaming pyres, singing and laughing and clapping their hands in glee. Hear their parents saying this isn’t desecration, it’s a celebration of God. See James Robinson, the video preacher, exhorting his congregation with the idea that The Moral Majority must raise up a tyrant to make us think as they do. Hear Falwell tell you that it doesn’t matter what the real majority of Americans want, that this is a holy war and the rest of us must be made to believe as they do. See it all, friends, the freak show of the beatific! The three-piece-suited manipulators who have had their way so completely with this country for the past eight years that Doubleday, a major New York textbook publisher, will issue this fall a biology text in which the word evolution does not appear. See school teachers who have been fired and their lives crippled because they said to kids, “Well, what is your opinion of…” The Moral Majority wants narrow teaching, by rote, and opinions are not permitted.

  See it all, narrated by Burt Lancaster, long a champion of free speech, the shiny face of that coin which sports, on its obverse, tarnished and scarred, the visage of Charlton Heston.

  As I stood there on that Tuesday night, trembling in horror—it’s that sort of film—I heard Norman Lear ask the wealthy assemblage to pledge monies to buy airtime in the expensive video markets across America. Paul Newman bought Cleveland for $12,078. Stanley Sheinbaum bought Medford, Oregon for $1032 and Lansing, Michigan, $7680. Stanley Marcus of Neiman Marcus bought Austin, Texas for $3468. Vice-Chairman of Warner Bros. Ted Ashley bought a run in New York for $29,351 and a second run in L.A. for $35,692. Music mogul Jerry Weintraub, manager for Sinatra and John Denver among others, gave you tomorrow night’s screening here in Los Angeles.

  Goldie Hawn had just bought Baltimore.

  And there I stood, with mostly dust in my pockets, readers, because I was way out of my financial league with those people, and I heard someone say, “I’ll buy Billings, Montana because a woman who taught one of my stories there was run out of town.”

  And it was me. I did a lecture last week, out of state, and they paid me $1500, and I gave that $1500 to People For The American Way so they can buy a half hour to show this urgently needed program in the area where Kathy Merrick’s parade got pissed on.

  Except, flustered and broke as I was when I said I’d take Billings, the area that services Winifred, Montana is not Billings, it’s the Missoula-Butte market, and it costs a mere $744…and I ain’t got no more to give.

  But if you’d like to fight back against the 11% of far right fanatics who think they can order our lives for us, then please watch Channel 11 tomorrow night at 8:30. Burt Lancaster will give you 800 numbers to call to make a pledge.

  Five bucks, ten, a big twenty-five…even in these times when none of us has escaped Reaganomics…it all adds up. And if you earmark it for the Missoula-Butte, Montana market, then Kathy Merrick can turn on her set one night very soon and know that someone out here gave a damn that her life was fucked up by the alien things walking the streets of God-fearing America.

  Because, for God’s sake, we’ve got to start fighting back before they set up concentration camps for all the rest of us Hell-condemned heathens.

  —————LETTERS—————

  Gun Control

  Dear Editor:

  As a gun owner, I take offense at the ravings of Harlan Ellison [Sept. 24–30, 1982] on the subject of gun control. His slander of gun owners is unconscionable. The vast majority are reasonable and sane, not the right-wing Neanderthals he purports us to be.

  The arguments against gun control, which he so often decries, “guns don’t kill, people kill” and “if guns are outlawed, only outlaws will own guns,” may be old slogans, but they still ring true. I grew up in New York City, which has one of the toughest gun control laws in the country; so tough that it is virtually impossible to buy a handgun. But it is obscenely easy to purchase a cheap firearm from any dealer at the “midnight gun store.” This fact makes a farce of the law and of respect for it.

  There are presently enough laws on the books to punish anyone using a handgun in a crime (a person who would, of course, run out and register his “job tool” as soon as the law is enacted), without imposing unreasonable burdens on responsible citizens.

  One more slogan to think about: “The difference between a long gun and a handgun is a hacksaw.”

  To ease Mr. Ellison’s conspiratorial mindset, I am not now, nor have I ever been, a member of the NRA or any other “gun lobby.”

  As a taxpayer and regular voter, I urge every free-thinking citizen to vote NO on Proposition 15 on Nov. 3. Your freedom is in your hands. Don’t give it up.

  —BobBeberfall

  West Hollywood

  Prop. 15

  Dear Editor:

  I am sure Harlan Ellison [September 24–30] is well motivated; we would all like to see an end to violent crime. Yet it is not clear that legislation like Proposition 15 would help. Unfortunately, Harlan’s frantic diatribe does nothing to clarify the issues.

  I do not own a gun, though I certainly want the right to: Ellison’s contention that anyone who might want to own a handgun is a raving lunatic from the fringes of the far right; a neo-Nazi, a Falwellian fanatic, a gun-racked NRA desperado, a supporter of James Watt; or worse, is a specious proposition that appeals to our desire for simple solutions and to our most bigoted fears.

  The simple fact is, today’s criminals do not purchase handguns through legal channels! The convicted felon is not allowed to, and the as yet unconvicted one is not going to give his name, driver’s license and gun serial number to the police. Moreover, a felon cannot be charged for not registering a handgun, because it violates his fifth amendment protection against self-incrimination. Ca
tch 22: Proposition 15 would only serve to create technical criminals—otherwise law obeying folks who own a gun.

  Our own history has shown amply the futility of outlawing the things that people want. Prohibition created a booming black market in alcohol and a vast criminal infrastructure to support it. Ellison knows that many of his own readers are violaters of a different prohibition: “putting all that good dope down your neck…or freebasing or whatever…” Since a large peer group does not disapprove, many people in California use drugs. The laws against drugs exist, but does the flow of contraband cease? Hell no, and the people who support this black market (your friends and mine) are not nearly as determined to “score” as is the criminal seeking a gun.

  So tell me, Harlan, how do you expect this law to stop criminals from getting guns? It will probably work as well as it has in other states, where it hasn’t done a thing to stop gun related crimes anywhere: not in Massachusetts, not in New York City, not in Washington, D.C. Why should it work in California?

  Do we really need to create another large, expensive bureaucracy to administer this law? Perhaps those millions of dollars annually could be better spent, for instance, on more police, so that we might really have a chance at stopping all this crime.

  Finally, our constitution guarantees us the right to bear arms. That right may sound a little dated in 1982, but let us not take this venerable document lightly; it has served us well. Perhaps the framers of the constitution knew a thing or two. Remember, there is gun control in Poland.

  —Michael Lawler

  Los Angeles

  Interim memo

  Naturally, in a nation where functional illiterates with virility problems continue to misread “freedom to bear arms” as meaning they can own, pack and use guns at their whim, Prop. 15 was defeated. And the slaughter goes on and on and on and on and…

  INSTALLMENT 48: 25 OCTOBER 82

  Every 2 minutes a handgun is manufactured in America.

  Every 13 minutes the cops take a gun away from someone in America.

  Every 20 minutes someone is killed by a handgun in America.

  During the time of the Vietnam War, more Americans were killed by handguns, in America, than died in the war.

  Every year, 350,000 people are injured by handguns. In America.

  So stop all this bullshit about “guns in the hands of criminals.” Enough lies, already! Enough of those sleazy (and uncredited) posters showing Nazis machinegunning people and shoveling them into mass graves under the legend GUN REGISTRATION EQUALS MASS EXTERMINATION or FIRST REGISTER THEIR GUNS, THEN REGISTER THE JEWS. Enough of those duplicitous tv commercials with the little old lady cowering in her bed as an intruder turns the knob of her bedroom door, and the police dispatcher she’s got on the phone tells her they can’t come to her aid because all the cops are out registering handguns.

  Enough, already.

  Enough of people like Bob Beberfall of West Hollywood and Michael Lawler of L.A., who wrote in the last issue to scare the hell out of you by saying freedom means having a gun. Don’t swallow any more lies, for God’s sake!

  It isn’t the guns in the hands of thugs we’re talking about, though guys like Lawler and Beberfall and their mentors at the National Rifle Association and their mentors at the arms manufacturers have skewed the question so everyone talks about guns in the hands of criminals. What we’re talking about are the 80% of all deaths every year that are caused by snubbies in the hands of people as ordinary as Beberfall and Lawler. The ordinary citizens. You and me. We’re the ones who have to be protected from ourselves, not from the thugs.

  Don’t try to con yourselves into believing that 350,000 people are maimed and crippled by thugs! There ain’t that many crooks in the whole country. The police tell us, over and over again, that you are ten times more likely to be killed by your own gun, in your own home, by someone you know, than you are to be killed by a gun in the hands of a thug.

  A few weeks ago a woman trying to back into a parking space was aced out of the parking by a guy pulling in from behind in a VW. She promptly got out of her car with a .22 Police Positive she carried in the glove compartment “for protection,” and she proceeded to blow the guy away. For stealing her parking space.

  Two weeks ago every Los Angeles newspaper featured a story about a man who shot his six-year-old daughter through the head demonstrating “defense” with the household handgun.

  It’s not the criminals. They’ll have guns one way or the other. But we can cut down on the accessibility of guns to those criminals by registration. Because the police tell us, over and over, that thugs and street hoods get the guns from our homes when they rob us. And “protection” is an ephemeral lie because most robberies occur when no one is home.

  So who is it that has turned nice guys like Beberfall and Lawler into paranoids who think freedom emerges from the barrel of a Saturday Night Special? It is the gun makers. Charter Arms Corporation (manufacturers of the gun that killed John Lennon) has contributed $10,000 to the anti-Prop. 15 campaign. Pachmayr Gun Works, Inc., has spent $14,000 in California. Hernady Manufacturing sent in $8000. Charter is located in Stratford, Connecticut. Hernady is in Grand Island, Nebraska.

  But they’re only pikers. Tune in to this:

  The money to spur the No on 15 campaign, marketed on tv and in the newspapers as in defense of your right to bear arms, has come from the following: $100,000 from Smith & Wesson of Springfield, Massachusetts; $170,000 from Sturm, Ruger & Co. of Southport, Connecticut; $50,000 from Harrington &. Richardson of Gardner, Massachusetts; $50,000 from Remington of Bridgeport, Connecticut; $50,000 from Omark of Idaho; $50,000 from Winchester in New Haven, Connecticut.

  Hey, Lawler; hey, Beberfall—try and convince us that all these gun manufacturers, who don’t contribute hundreds of thousands to fight pollution, or buy books for libraries, or fund the arts, or buy milk for schoolchildren, that all of these death merchants have nothing in their hearts but a love of the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Try to explain why they’re so goddam interested in what’s going on here in California…if it isn’t to stop a nationwide movement by those of us you consider “hysterical” because we’re saying enough is enough. Hysterical? Hell, yes! What does it take to get the rest of you hysterical enough to vote YES ON 15?

  Don’t you understand, though the cops have told you, over and over, that half of all the guns in circulation are stolen guns? Where do you think those pistoleros got the firepower? From our homes, that’s where!

  We’ve got to stop the NRA. We’ve got to break up that massive Washington D.C. lobby that allows the death merchants to make us a little more terrified every year, that permits the big profits selling things intended for no other earthly purpose than to kill.

  Are they worried, the NRA…the gun makers? You bet your ass they’re worried, because Prop. 15 is a “shot” they’re afraid will be heard around the country. They’re so damned scared they are getting careless. They’re coming out in the open. How? Try this one, and consider if you want to vote in favor of people who’ll do this kind of thing:

  Various police chiefs around California are strongly supporting Prop. 15. Last week a “promotional item” from the NRA-backed Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms was received by (among others) Police Chief Kolender of San Diego, Chief McNamara of San Jose, and Chief Con Murphy of San Francisco: targets filled with bullet holes, with the bullseye reading NO ON 15. The money raising gimmick promised those who shot out the targets that the money would go to defeat YES ON 15 and the targets would go to those no-good Commie police chiefs.

  Read the arguments in your voter’s handbook. Read how sane and sensible Prop. 15 is. Turn away from those scare tactic tv commercials. Consider the mentality of people who’ll show Nazis killing Jews just to make you crazy when you come to vote. VOTE YES ON 15. Enough is enough.

  You may not have heard me. Let me say it again, so you’ll remember it on November 2nd. VOTE YES ON PROP. 15.

&n
bsp; Last year, handguns killed 48 people in Japan, 8 in Great Britain, 34 in Switzerland, 52 in Canada, 58 in Israel, 21 in Sweden, and 42 in West Germany.

  Last year, handguns killed 10,728 in America.

  Hey, Lawler; hey, Beberfall…how much blood does it take to buy your idea of “freedom”?

  Hey, everybody: let’s get hysterical! Enough is enough.

  Interim memo

  I’m not sure this will make much sense. But if I don’t take a wild stab at explaining it, this column won’t make any sense. What happened was that Tom Nolan, who writes the Mr. Los Angeles restaurant review column in Los Angeles magazine, felt snubbed by me because I’d met him a few times but didn’t remember what he looked like, and so I didn’t say hi to him one night in a dinery where we crossed paths. Now, Tom Nolan is a nice man and I freely confess to brain damage when it comes to remembering names with faces. I guess what actually happened was that I was preoccupied, didn’t see him, and walked past him. Meaning him no slight. In any case, along about late October of 1982 I started getting calls from my friends saying, “Have you seen the Mr. Los Angeles column in the magazine this month?” No, I replied. What’s going on? Well, I was told, Tom Nolan had written a rather snide column satirizing you as “Hubbel Nordine.” Their ire had been aroused; they read the column to be well along into meanspirited. Knowing that Tom Nolan is not a meanspirited man, I picked up the issue of Los Angeles in question, and read what was a combination restaurant review-satire, written in Tom’s distinctive breathless style. So for my column published in the 5–11 November 82 L.A. Weekly I wrote a parody of Nolan’s style and subject matter, recommending a couple of restaurants and a satin jacket manufacturer I’d been meaning to plug, utilizing the mythical figures of Hubbel Nordine, Mr. Los Angeles and non-existent actor Dane Trevor. Those who’d read the Nolan column got the gag. Those who didn’t…didn’t. Nolan and I made contact, got everything squared away, more or less, and that’s what all this is about. You’ll find the syntax and said-bookisms inconsistent with my usual writing style, and they were done for parody effect, so don’t chide me for it.