Nat Hentoff, the author, journalist, jazz critic and civil libertarian who called himself a troublemaker and proved it with a shelf of books and a mountain of essays on free speech, wayward politics, elegant riffs and the sweet harmonies of the Constitution, died on Saturday. He was 91.
His son, Nick Hentoff, announced the death on Twitter.
Mr. Hentoff wrote for The Village Voice for 50 years, and produced articles for The New Yorker, The Washington Post, Down Beat magazine and dozens of other publications. He wrote more than 35 books — novels, volumes for young adults and nonfiction works on civil liberties, education and other subjects.
The Hentoff bibliotheca reads almost like an anthology: works by a jazz aficionado, a mystery writer, an eyewitness to history, an educational reformer, a political agitator, a foe of censors, a social critic. He was, indeed, like the jazz he loved — given to improvisations and permutations, a composer-performer who lived comfortably with his contradictions, though adversaries called him shallow and unscrupulous, and even his admirers sometimes found him infuriating, unrealistic and stubborn.
He was always his own man:In the 1950s, Mr. Hentoff was a jazz critic in Manhattan, frequenting crowded, smoky nightclubs where musicians played for low pay and audiences ran hot and cold and dreamy. “I knew their flaws as well as their strengths,” he recalled, “but I continued to admire the honesty and courage of their art.”
While his sympathies were usually libertarian, he often infuriated leftist friends with his opposition to abortion, his attacks on political correctness and his criticisms of gay groups, feminists, blacks and others he accused of trying to censor opponents. He relished the role of provocateur, indirectly defending racial slurs, apartheid and pornography.
He had a firebrand’s face: wreathed in a gray beard and a shock of unruly hair, with dark, uncompromising eyes. Once a student asked what made him tick. “Rage,” he replied. But he said it softly, and friends recalled that his invective, in print or in person, usually came wrapped in gentle good humor and respectful tones.He first came to my attention in my youth as a byline on liner notes on album covers. As I broadened my range of interests and deepened my understanding of human freedom, there he was again, insisting that conversations about liberty leave no aspect glossed over.
And I have to say I identify with his answer to the student who asked what made him tick.
Bloggie, would you care to share some of his sweet harmonies on the Constitution? Of course I can google some but I'd like to see if we agree. And whether he upholds our system of common law which has been with us since our founding.
ReplyDeleteOne of his final columns would seem to indicate that he was an originalist, believing that if we continue to hew to the original intent of the Framers, we'll have proper guidance for anything the modern world throws at us:
ReplyDeletehttp://jewishworldreview.com/cols/hentoff090616.php3
OK, fine, but you do understand the role played by the common law. Take a gander at any Supreme Court decision throughout the history of this Republic and you will find more citations to common law than to the actual Constitution. Why, because that is the way the interpretations (really no way to hew to the original intent of dead Framers who cannot be here to state their intent, is there?) are cited, each one upon the other. And, as the Constitution states, these decisions rest upon law, not individual men. So tea partiers, neo-cons, liberal pukes, all can have their interpretations heard, but until the gavel bangs, none of them will stand as law.
ReplyDelete"there seem to be many reasons to insist that the answer to that question-do we have a living Constitution that changes over time?-cannot be yes. In fact, the critics of the idea of a living constitution have pressed their arguments so forcefully that, among people who write about constitutional law, the term "the living constitution" is hardly ever used, except derisively. The Constitution is supposed to be a rock-solid foundation, the embodiment of our most fundamental principles-that's the whole idea of having a constitution. Public opinion may blow this way and that, but our basic principles-our constitutional principles-must remain constant. Otherwise, why have a Constitution at all?
Even worse, a living Constitution is, surely, a manipulable Constitution. If the Constitution is not constant-if it changes from time to time-then someone is changing it, and doing so according to his or her own ideas about what the Constitution should look like. The "someone," it's usually thought, is some group of judges. So a living Constitution becomes not the Constitution at all; in fact it is not even law any more. It is just some gauzy ideas that appeal to the judges who happen to be in power at a particular time and that they impose on the rest of us.
So it seems we want to have a Constitution that is both living, adapting, and changing and, simultaneously, invincibly stable and impervious to human manipulation. How can we escape this predicament?"
I've cited this excellent primer here before, but if you want to, read more again at: http://www.law.uchicago.edu/alumni/magazine/fall10/strauss