Harry´s Blog

Nat Hentoff

From Swing Men and Women by Herbert Kuhner

You could call Nat Hentoff,
the Dean of jazz critics.

I’ve already expressed my
admiration for him.

Nat has always been politically minded
and he certainly knows how to write
a political sentence,
as well as a sentence about music.

Nat is now “pro-life.”
He’s opposed to,
what some refer to
as murder before birth.

Abortion is not exactly
a desirable procedure,
but to quote the title
of an instrumental number
by Lester Young:
“I’m fer it!”
Or rather I’m for
keeping it legal.

If abortion is murder,
bringing unwanted children
into the world is murder double-fold.
Making abortion illegal
means bringing the knitting needle
into play again
and reviving the back street abortion.

Nat also is convinced
that Elian should have stayed
in the United States.

To recoup,
Elian is the boy,
whose mother drowned
while trying to reach the United States
with him.

I beg to differ.

I’d like to have had Elian
grow up in the land
that’s great in many ways
and can be improved
if we work at it -
but not at the price of being
separated from his surviving parent.

Elian’s father may be a member
of the Cuban Communist Party
and he may be a citizen
of a totalitarian state,
but it is not democracy’s business
to break up families.

The South American juntas,
who regretfully were our friends,
forcefully separated children
from their parents
and presented them to like-minded couples
for adoption.

Let’s not follow their example!

Nat lists the lack of liberties and chances
that Elian would have in Cuba,
and he’s right.

However, Cuban children do have
have minimum social benefits,
free hospital care when they need it
and the infant mortality rate
is lower than ours.

I was impressed with Fidel
decades ago
when he was photographed
in the mountains reading a book,
of all things.

Well, I rapidly became
disillusioned,
and like Nat
I favor
freedom and democracy.
These things just ain’t
in Cuba.

Nat helps underline this
by reminiscing.
Decades ago,
when he asked Che Guevara about elections,
“Guevara laughed derisively, and said in Spanish,
‘Here?’ And he kept laughing.”

However, I don’t think
that most of the twenty percent
who grow up in poverty
in our land,
will have the opportunity
of having access
to the rights we have.

Anyway Nat,
I dig what you have to say -
about music,
and like you,
I enjoy swinging sessions.

The Straight Road

You may think the best way
to get to your destination
is by plowing down the highway
at full speed,
rather than taking the circuitous path
on such issues as abortion
and capital punishment.

But why on earth is the turnpike
peppered with construction sites?
And why are there so many precipices
along the way?

Sometimes you can arrive safely
by taking the circuitous path,
but the destination may not be
the one you’re headed for.

The straight road leads to such aberrations
as the knitting needle, backstreet abortions
and the innocent getting executed.