Gorillas in the Myth: second edition

I’ve just released a second edition of my first book, “revisited and revised a smidgeon.” Here’s a timely excerpt, written more than ten years ago.

The crystal plummets

Raving tree huggers, myself included, sometimes claim we may be destroying planet Earth. Pie-eyed techno-idiots insist that everything will be peachy if we just dump environmental regulations and the Endangered Species Act, and let the free market rock and roll. Who is right? Is there any prayer that we can find common ground?

When I voice concern about the environment, I tend to believe that I support Life. But the truth is, my concern is for life like us. Bacteria are really neat little goobers, and we couldn’t survive without them, but they did just fine without us for about ninety percent of the time since things began to wiggle on this planet.

The urgency I feel about toxic waste or global warming involves preserving the current population of the planet. I have a fondness for oxygen-breathing, carbon-based life forms like dolphins and cats and gorillas and bats, hummingbirds and butterflies, tuna, termites, lizards—and people. Well, some people, anyway.

When I factor people into the equation, it looks as though I might be speaking the same language as the movement that has adopted “wise use” as its slogan. The wise-users are the folks who want to permit mining, grazing and hunting in national parks, and who insist that old-growth forests are a renewable resource. They claim that global warming is an illusion, that there are no foreseeable limits to the human population of our planet, and that science will solve all of our problems by some time next week. They say the only useful measure of any policy is whether it is good for people, and they’re fond of trotting out a few scientists to bolster their claims.

OK, let’s go with that.

What? Me, a raving tree hugger, ready to accept the bottom line defined by earth rapers like Rush and Chainsaw Charlie? [former Rep. Charles Taylor, R-NC] Have I been drinking to excess?

My single caveat would be that we all must be willing to rely on real science, instead of rhetoric, to settle policy disputes. I am ready to concede any environmental debate on that basis. And by “real science,” I mean the consensus of the majority of knowledgeable researchers in a given field. Why do I say consensus? Shouldn’t we demand scientific proof?

Nice idea, but science doesn’t work that way. Outside of mathematics, where everything either adds up or it doesn’t, proof is impossible.

For example, if you release a crystal goblet ten feet above a brick patio, it will probably fall and shatter. Scientifically speaking, there is actually a tiny chance that it will bounce and land safely—and a much tinier chance that it won’t even fall. But, based on our experience of gravity and bricks, most of us would agree that the crystal is history.

In the same way, if the overwhelming majority of scientists agree about a particular issue, and one or a few disagree, the odds are very strong that the majority is correct.

Ready to be blinded by science? In 1992, nearly sixteen hundred of the world’s senior scientists, including more than half the living Nobel laureates—women and men from every discipline and every continent—signed The World’s Scientists Warning to Humanity. More have signed it in the years since then. In 1993, fifty-six of the world’s scientific academies met for the first-ever world Science Summit and issued a collaborative statement.

Most of the world’s scientists agree that, if the human race is to survive, we must reach zero population growth within the present generation. We must act now to shift from fossil fuels and nonrenewable resources to sustainable technologies. We must act now to reduce introduction of toxins and pollutants into the biosphere. We must act now to protect the biodiversity upon which all life depends.

Translation: The crystal goblet is headed toward the bricks.

There is nothing wrong with using human benefit as the measure of our policies, but short-term profit is a bad gage of success if it threatens long-term survival. If you are intent on amassing a fortune to leave to your heirs, you will also need some heirs to leave it to.

Are our current environmental-protection laws necessary? Sorry, Charlie: We have barely begun.

Coming soon to Amazon.com

Radio interview podcast/stream

Nadia Shamsedin interviewed me on MLK Day on her Republic Broadcasting show, Escape from Freedom. We discussed my recent book, The Prince of War: Billy Graham’s Crusade for a Wholly Christian Empire. Because of the holiday, there was particular attention on Graham’s adversarial relationship with Martin Luther King, Jr., “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” (essentially addressed to Graham), Graham’s disparaging remarks following “I Have a Dream” and so forth.

You can download a podcast or stream it here.

(You’ll need to scroll down to January 21, and if you find this post after January, you may need to first select the month.)

Upcoming speaking events: Jan. 7 and 19

In this month’s newsletter I dropped a date. Silly me. People may already be camped out in Brevard. (Thanks for the correction, Majo.)

Brevard, Jan. 19, 1 p.m. I will join Transylvanians For Peace members for lunch after their weekly vigil at the courthouse. At 3 p.m. I’ll head over to Highland Books, 480 North Broad Street.

Enka, Jan. 7, 6 p.m., Citizens for Change monthly meeting, Shoney’s restaurant, Hwy 19-23. I will address bias in the media, speaking from my experience as an investigative reporter, editor and biographer.

First print review of the new book … and my take

Mountain Xpress has published a dual review by Duke University teacher Seth Howland. Howland took a look at my book side-by-side with The Preacher and the Presidents, a new offering from Time magazine writers Nancy Gibbs and Michael Duffy. (Read my review of their book here.)

While Howland, an evangelical Christian, gives predictable credit to Graham’s putative “good works,” and has strong disagreements with my take on Graham’s later career, I think the review is largely a fair one. The only specific complaint I would offer is his use of the word “specious” to describe some of my sources. Wrong. I may or may not have overlooked exculpatory evidence, but my sources are all academically solid.

An example of our different takes: Howland sees Graham’s entry into the Soviet Union over Ronald Reagan’s objections as an example of the minister taking the moral high ground. I see it as opening a new market. In essence, all of the good ascribed to Graham comes down to belief that his beliefs are valid. To my way of thinking he has profited enormously from selling an untestable hypothesis.

But I am, notwithstanding specific quibbles, humbled by the seriousness with which my work is being considered now that it is out in the world. As Howland fairly concludes:
“Even so, The Preacher and the Presidents and The Prince of War render a valuable service. By providing conflicting accounts of a life lived in the public eye, these two books reveal the fundamental difficulty of biography. If the authors have failed to offer perspective on every aspect of Graham’s career, they nonetheless move conversations about his legacy forward.”

Who could ask for anything more?

First review out for The Prince of War

Okay, so I’m tooting my own horn—but that’s what blogs boil down to anyway.
CounterPunch, Alexander Cockburn’s and Jeffrey St. Clair’s most excellent online newsletter, beat all the others to the punch with the first review of my forthcoming book. I couldn’t be happier with the review or the source. The publishing world sometimes looks like a walled fortress. Getting any attention for a book from an independent publishing house is really tough. Ingram, the principal book distributor for bookstores in the U.S, won’t even handle a title by a publisher with less than 10 titles per year. The major reviewers are disinclined to look at indy publications for that reason alone. (Though I am typing with crossed fingers.)

Here ’tis:

Rev. Billy Graham: A Prince of War Exposed
by William Hughes

“The shepherd always tries to persuade the sheep that their interests and his own are the same.”
- Stendhal

The propaganda machine of the Evangelical Christian Right will soon be in counter attack mode. One of its darling preachers is about to take it on the proverbial chin. The Rev. Billy Graham, who has created a multimillion dollar media empire, that a Rupert Murdock would envy, is the subject of a shocking expose’ due out on Nov. 15, 2007. It’s entitled, “The Prince of War: Billy Graham’s Crusade for a Wholly Christian Empire.” The author is Cecil Bothwell. He hails from Asheville, North Carolina and is an award winning investigative reporter. Bothwell’s unflattering portrait of Rev. Graham shows him as a wily warmonger and a lackey for the Establishment. He describes Rev. Graham as a public figure who: “Undermined the Founders’ skeptical Deism and sought to rebrand the U.S. as a Christian nation, [and] its armies [as] the rightful instruments of [a] Christian crusade and empire.”

For the rest of the review, click here.

The Prince of War: Billy Graham’s Crusade for a Wholly Christian Empire

Available here

The Prince of War: Billy Graham’s Crusade for a Wholly Christian Empire
by Cecil Bothwell
Brave Ulysses Books, 2007

***
For an independent review of the book, click here.
***

“It is when power is wedded to chronic fear that it becomes formidable.”
—Eric Hoffer

Introduction

I first became curious about Billy Graham in March, 2002. Like anyone else in our culture, I had been aware of his fame, his frequent appearances with presidents and his well-attended crusades, but an Associated Press story caught my eye. It said that recently released transcripts of taped conversations in the Nixon White House included an exchange between the preacher and the President, in 1972, about the malevolent influence of Jews in the United States. As reported in newspapers across the country, the conversation appeared to have been brief, a few sentences on either side which included the suggestion from Graham that something might be done about the problem after Nixon’s reelection.

Graham’s public relations firm issued an apology in which the preacher disavowed his anti-Semitic comments and a rapprochement was reached with a national association of rabbis. Graham was forgiven.

Considering Nixon’s reputation for meanness and paranoia, the public impression was that Graham, a polite and agreeable sort, had been pulled into a bit of unpleasantness with a close friend—something that can happen to anyone. Do we automatically knock down a buddy who tells a dumb blonde joke, a Polish joke, an immigrant tale? We should, but do we? Not always. Graham is human too. And, after all, this wasn’t just any old friend. He was the President of the United States of America.

But I was curious. As an investigative reporter with, then, fifteen years of experience under my belt, I was well aware that news stories rarely contain all the facts, if for no other reason than the limitations of space. I wondered about the context of the conversation, where it began and where it ended. So I obtained the transcript.

I learned that the conversation had lasted an hour and a half, had rarely strayed from denunciation of Jews and had been led by Graham. That astonished me. Moreover, twenty minutes of conversation had been redacted before release. What, I wondered, had been suppressed?

Beyond that, I mulled Graham’s career more broadly. I knew he had been more or less close to every president since Eisenhower. Later I would learn about his relationship with Truman. I knew he led prayer breakfasts and attended other official functions that splashed through the media from time to time. But what of his conversations behind closed doors? Was the Jew conversation typical or an aberration?

That was the beginning of the present volume.

The past several decades may well rank as the most fearful time in human history—given that tangible threats to human life grew far beyond ancient phantasms of myth or the unfathomable mysteries posited by ignorance. What’s more, electronic media have spread bad news everywhere, live and in color, while modern print techniques erupted in the form of glossy news magazines employing photographers who fanned out across the globe.

It is no surprise that a ministry that preached fear and promised salvation could prosper in such times and Billy Graham proved expert at brandishing both stick and carrot in tents and stadia around the planet.

Graham understood early and well that a successful ministry would require professional salesmanship and he carefully cultivated contacts in the major media with an eye to presenting his work in the best possible light. At the same time, he founded his own media conglomerate of magazine, radio, television and film production which was the precursor of Focus on the Family, the 700 Club, PTL and the widely influential Left Behind series.

Graham’s enthusiastic supporters in big media have consistently portrayed him as apolitical. As recently as February 2005, Time magazine reported, “He has had the ear of Presidents for five decades, but except for his public disavowal of racial segregation, Billy Graham, 86, has stuck to soul saving and left the political proselytizing to others. He explained his self-imposed separation of church and state in the language of a Gospel preacher: ‘It’s not what I was called to do.’”

However, notwithstanding his professed calling, it is apparent that Graham worked the corridors of Congress as well as the private rooms of the White House, sometimes overtly, sometimes quietly, in secret letters and private phone calls. And, quite contrary to Time’s assertion, it seems that Graham did more to abet segregation than to end it, actively opposing Martin Luther King, Jr.’s use of civil disobedience while endorsing aggressive police tactics and punitive laws.

Like many another political figure, Graham has sealed most of the personal documents connected to his life and work until after—in some cases many years after—his death. Nor did he consent to be interviewed for this work. But the published and unpublished documentary record speaks volumes. It reveals a Billy Graham who has been an unabashed nationalist, capitalist, militarist and advocate for American empire. The picture that emerges is decidedly not that of a disinterested man of the cloth. Rather, Graham often appears as a well connected covert political operative. To the extent that this seems surprising, it stems from the public’s willful naiveté concerning a self-professed holy man coupled with intentionally biased reporting from the major media at the behest of ideologues including, most prominently, William Randolph Hearst and Henry Luce.

Perhaps we should pay heed to what Graham has actually said instead of accepting his own and others’ later versions of the facts. This tale is told in Graham’s words and those of the biographers, historians, public figures and Presidents who knew him well.

You may be as surprised as I was at the picture that emerges in these pages. It is not the story of a man of peace.

– Coming soon from Brave Ulysses Books