I got to meet Michael Parenti today!!

[mcctatas]

From reading several of his books, I knew he was very intelligent, but what doesn't come across in them is that he's actually really funny too. I made him sign my 5 year old, used, tattered, highlighted by several owners, copy of "Against Empire". Anyway, that was my brush with greatness for the year.:)

[JanMichael]

1. Very cool!

I've wondered what he was like in person and it's good to hear that he's got a sense of humor.

Quick question, he's a Marxist, yes?

[mcctatas]

4. I think it's safe to say that he has Marxist tendancies...

he got into a little tiff with a rethug in my class who took exception to Parenti using the term "third world" (same old tired line about it being the developing world), Parenti basically told him that he wasn't going to use a politically correct term to promote a lie, it isn't developing in any true sense of the word...He ate the guy for lunch! Of course after class he gave me shit about drinking diet coke, but we all have our vices;)

[Moochy]

5. He doesnt deny the existence of Marxist class analysis

Unlike so many who are scared into ignoring Marx's writings for the wrong reasons.

[Ellen Forradalom]

7. I heard him speak sometime in the 80s

at some big Gathering Of Thee Leftists at St. Scholastica High School in Chicago.

I had some issues with him. I remember thinking he was an apologist for the Soviets, particularly in downplaying Stalin's crimes.

[Moochy]

10. That sounds like the slander that RW leafletters used against him

...given the speeches I've heard him make on KPFA, and in person, and the 3 books I've read by him.

Anyone who use class analysis is painted as a china apologist or a stalin apologist. Your impression may have been accurate, I'm not so sure, but it seems like red-bating to me.

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Parenti/Superpatriotism.html

I read the pamphlet which claimed he said that only 1000 people were in the gulags and that is just a lie.

"Democracy is not about trust; it is about distrust. It is about accountability, exposure, open debate, critical challenge, and popular input and feedback from the citizenry. It is about responsible government. We have to get our fellow Americans to trust their leaders less and themselves more, trust their own questions and suspicions, and their own desire to know what is going on."
Michael Parenti

[Ellen Forradalom]

12. I'm just reporting how I reacted

when I actually heard him speak with no preconceived notion planted by the right or anyone else. I remember being put off by what I thought was an excessively warm embrace of the S.U. And I wasn't a Sovietophobe by any stretch of the imagination.

I have no problem with class analysis. We could stand to hear a lot more of it.

[Moochy]

13. Just to be clear I saw your post as honest reaction

Not a some slanderous talking point, just that I'd seen his views mischaracterized by that pamphlet that was distributed by a Tibetan group that disagrees strongly with his views on Tibet, which were not sufficiently supportive, or were seen to be too rosy wiht regard to China's communist regime.

Sorry for being obtuse, I'm trying to get to 2000 posts tonite ;-) and cutting a few corners!

[Moochy]

2. Congrats!

I just finished his Assasination of Julius Caesar

http://www.michaelparenti.org/Caesar.html

Interesting read, though it took me over a year to finish it! :)

[Talismom]

3. I heard him speak during the Iran-Contra period and it was the first

I heard about corporate control over the media and along with Chomsky's writing, and visits to Bidens committee on Western hemisphere affairs,his writing started me on the road to my current obsession with politics. He was funny and brilliant and really taught me a lot. I'm glad you enjoyed hearing him too!

[jonnyblitz]

6. i just bought "superpatriotism" by him

I have the book you mentioned plus "america besieged", "dirty truths" and "blackshirts and reds". the book by him I really want to read is 'to kill a nation, the attack on yugoslavia". I am sure that book will go against what most here at DU would believe. I would love to here him speak. :thumbsup:

[davekriss]

9. Power and the Powerless

My favorite, unmentioned so far, is Power and the Powerless

[jonnyblitz]

11. I only read a few of the ones I listed that I have.

I could read them all.

[Orrin_73]

8. I mailed him about one of his

articles a few weeks ago, to my surprise I got a reply from him.