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Barney Rosset turned down a chance to publish The Hobbit. That, he would recall, was an act of stupendous stupidity.

But The Hobbit would surely have seemed out of place on the long list of significant books Rosset published in his several decades running Grove Press, the imprint that challenged Americas ingrained prudery. Groves specialty wasnt fantasy but realism, in all its ungainly beauty.

Under Rossets plucky leadership, Grove introduced U.S. readers to Henry Millers Tropic of Cancer, William Burroughs Naked Lunch and Samuel Becketts Waiting for Godot. Amid the volatile culture of the mid-20th century, Grove legitimized degenerate authors such as Jean Genet and Hubert Selby Jr., and it backed the search for Che Guevaras diaries and the publication of Malcolm Xs Autobiography.

Some prominent names dot the modern history of alternative book publishing James Laughlin at New Directions, Lawrence Ferlinghetti at City Lights, John Martin at Black Sparrow. But Rosset, who died in 2012 after 60 years in the business, was in a category of one.

Inspired, as he writes in this gruff and amusing memoir, by his familys history of rebellion in Ireland and his own youthful admiration for the Robin Hood-style bank robber John Dillinger, he set out to topple government authority over the publishing business. And he succeeded.

First, Grove published the unexpurgated version of D.H. Lawrences Lady Chatterleys Lover, in 1959. Then it brought out Millers Tropic of Cancer and Burroughs Naked Lunch. In each case, the company fought legal battles to defend the social value of its authors work and the imprints freedom to publish them.

The old obscenity laws were a cultural barrier raised like a Berlin Wall between the public and free expression in literature, film and drama, he writes. Near the end of his life, hes clearly pleased to make it plain: We broke the back of censorship.

In its heyday, Grove was not just a publisher of novels. Rossets little empire helped establish a mass market for the publication of dramatic works, with titles by Beckett, Harold Pinter, Eugene Ionesco, Joe Orton, David Mamet and many more.

Grove published the Evergreen Review, which hosted a sizable chunk of the literary and political discussion of the 60s. The company also elbowed into the film business; Rossets recollections of Norman Mailers ridiculous escapades while directing his film Maidstone, involving real violence and a drunken Herv Villechaize, are a hoot.

Boldface names make cameos throughout. Rosset, who was married five times, kept up a long friendship with his first wife, the painter Joan Mitchell, and he writes of being stalked by Valerie Solanas, the militant feminist who shot Andy Warhol. (She once showed up at the Grove offices with an ice pick in her pocket.) In another episode, he negotiates with Francis Ford Coppola, who briefly entertained the idea of buying Grove Press.

Rosset reportedly began writing his autobiography a decade or so before his death, and its publication now could have something to do with the timing of an upcoming biography by Michael Rosenthal called Barney. By the second half of the book, Rossets habit of excerpting his correspondence with some of his closest confidants becomes a bit of an irritant. To his credit, he also gives voice to some of his detractors, including fellow publisher Maurice Girodias, who calls his colleague unbearable.

For bibliophiles and those with a renewed investment in guarding the First Amendment, Rossets long-overdue account of his career in publishing is a welcome addition to all those musty old Grove paperbacks. Recalling the implications of his first big censorship battle, for Lady Chatterleys Lover, he writes, It would be a savage kick in the face to Death and a lovely kiss to Life. That could have been the company slogan.

Former Chronicle critic James Sullivan is a regular contributor to the Boston Globe and the author of four books. Email: books@sfchronicle.com

Rosset

My Life in Publishing and How I Fought Censorship

By Barney Rosset

(OR Books; 360 pages; $28)

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'Rosset: My Life in Publishing and How I Fought Censorship' - San Francisco Chronicle

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The legacy media had an unfortunate incident when Mika Brzezinski of MSNBCs Morning Joe lamented Trump was influencing what people think and that controlling what people think is our job. This admission is a surprising revelation from what is largely a coordination propaganda machine that pretends that other sources of information are fake news and that they are impartial and unbiased.

The statement is in part an ongoing reaction of legacy medias view of President Trumps dynamic news conference from last week. Unlike the days of old, legacy media no longer can decide what the news of the day is or is not. Setting the narrative (or themes and talking points) is what they have done for decades. Now when they try to do it they are no longer successful and cannot yet fathom how this has happened.

Primarily they havent noticed that fewer people still trust legacy media and now get information from other sources. They themselves tend to sneer and dismiss other sources such as Fox (or faux News) and not take them seriously. Because of that they are blind to the shift in public trust. You would think that the steady decline in market share and rock bottom credibility ranking with the general public would be a hint but no, they cannot accept that it is a new reality.

The legacy media continues to ignore that internet, radio and other news sources are available and the public can get that information without them setting the narrative. You can check and see what an opposing side is saying and decide for yourself. Or you have someone like Trump who takes them head on and speaks over them to the audience. Thats what happened in the 2016 election. Trump got his message out over the GOP establishment and legacy media to the voters despite the constant efforts to smear, defame and poison the information so that he would not be elected. Legacy media provided Hillary debate questions in advance. When Donald Trump claimed it was rigged and crooked, he was right. Worse for the legacy media was that the public could see it. The conclusion of legacy media is that Russians and the FBI rigged the election not that they no longer controlled what the voters think.

In the past legacy media would have just talked over Trump and ensured that at the end of the day that their version of reality would be thats the way it is even if it wasnt. Not any longer.

Breitbart is a great example of a news organization that doggedly attacked legacy media and took great pains to explain what was not being said by them and how they were biased. It is not a surprise that Steve Bannon ended up at the White House with Trump, he was a large force at Breitbart steering the ship and was effective at countering the lefts template and talking points.

Donald Trump sensed the shift and now has the legacy media in turmoil, one might even say chaos. They have no idea what to do and why their usual methods of destruction arent working. Trump is still standing and their desperate dreams of seeing him do a Richard Nixon wave as he boards a helicopter after resigning are a perfect example of just how disconnected they have become from the new political landscape.

It will be interesting to see if Trumps humor and intellect will sway any in the media, it seemed to have something of an effect on many of the reporters. Then again the anger has unhinged certain people to the point where they publicly admit that they arent reporting the news but are attempting to control the voters. The pretense of fairness is shredded and legacy media still refuses to understand that the landscape has changed. The balance has shifted and that they, quite simply, no longer have control.

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Legacy Media Loses Control - Daily Caller

The modern Civil Rights Movement which began in earnest in the mid-1950s has much in common with the recent Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement

The deeds and sacrifices of Rosa Parks, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Medgar Evers, the hundreds on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, generated the energy which eventually knocked down Jim Crow.

Blacks Lives Matters (BLM), social media and the cell phone recorder have stimulated the current movement, due in part to the deaths of Black men and women from the bullets and deadly choke holds of police officers.

On February 26, 2017, we all should take a minute to remember Trayvon Martin. On that date in 2012, a 17-year-old child was coming back from the store.

with a soda and Skittles as snacks to watch an NBA game in Sanford, Florida.

George Zimmerman, a neighborhood watch guard, spotted him and declaredthe young hooded Black mandid not belong in the neighborhood, confrontedhim and killed him during a struggle.

Zimmerman, who is White, claimed he was standing his ground, and scared for his life. But if you were being followed by a stranger, dont you think such a defense would have been Trayvons?

The court accepted Zimmermans stand and found him not guilty of murder. Black people began wearing hoodies to remind us of the injustice.

Turn the dial back to a hot August in 1955, in Money, Mississippi.

Then 14-year-old Emmett Tillwas visiting his mothers home state from Chicago, and allegedly whistled and made other lewd remarks to a White woman in a general store.

Shortly afterthat, the young man was pulled from a bed in his uncles home, taken to a remote area and was mutilated.

His body was later found. Back in Chicago, his mother demanded that the badly decomposed body of her child be put on display in an open casket to see just how deadly Jim Crow and White hate could be. Jet magazine carried it on the front page.

The men who killed Till were not found guilty and the woman who claimed that he was fresh with her, 62 years ago, Carolyn Bryant has said she lied in a recently published book, The Blood Of Emmett Till by Timothy Bryant.

Three months later in 1955, Rosa Parks sat and Black people stood up in Montgomery, Alabama, pressing Black residents to fight and destroy the system which kept them in a state of slavery by another name.

Rosa, like other Black Montgomerians, were sick and tired of being sick and tired of being relegated to sitting in the back of the bus.

Several yearsago a youngClaudette Colvin (no relation, I guess) defied the law and was arrested. But Parks move triggered a year-long boycott by Black people of the bus lines. The courts struck down the citys Jim Crow seating policy. The modern Rights Movement was underway.

Black people found tools to fight Jim Crow: depriving the bus company of their dollars and directly challenging a system, non-violently, there and across the South.

The masters of Jim Crow were made to realize their hypocrisy. They were not living up to the ideal that all men were created equal.

Move forward years to Ferguson, Missouri in 2014 and recall 19-year-old Michael Browns body lying in the middle of a hot street heated by an August sun. A White officer shot him because, again, the cop felt like his life was being threatened.

In that city Black folk were so politically disengaged, it never dawned on them that they were in the majority.

Browns death pointed up the sustained and violent nature of how police treated them there and elsewhere in our so-called post-racial America.

Blacks were being ticketed at a higher rate for traffic violations and the city was using that money to fund the citys modern version of Jim Crow.

Protestors converged onFerguson, unrest ensued, reforms were imposed and the old masters of the new Jim Cow system were dispatched.

From the tumult in Ferguson, The Black Lives Matters Movement was given birth. Like the Civil Rights Movement which was given life in the mid-1950s after the murder of Emmett Till and the Montgomery Bus Boycott, it was the object of what we call now Whitelash by conservatives.

How dare these ungrateful and underserving Blacks, who have caused their own ills, demand to be treated equally, when, the nation had just elected its first Black President.

This view of the nations racial tensions help elect Donald Trump.

It is called Whitelash against the current Black liberation movement.

There is a claim that these protesting Blacks and Hispanics are being ungrateful and racist. But this is just a rhetorical ply and mind trick to confuse Black people and distract us from the continued racism many Whites deny.

Along with the current liberation movement led by the BLM, the Black Press and others fighting for criminal justice reform against police abuses, the current revolt against Trump reminds us of another passage in history

Recallthe mid-1960s when the resistance to the Vietnam War and the fight for Civil Rights reforms collided.

The collision drew attention to the financial inequality, deprivations of people from certain Islamic and Black dominated countries immigrating to our borders, educational and housing disparities then.

The collision worked, and the nation did advance to a degree, but it seems that there was a great of unfinished business that Trump has used to trigger White anger and resentment anew today.

Again, unrest is brewing in the streets and I hope that it will be a shield against the Trump White House and the GOP controlled Congress.

This is just a reminder that while we celebrate the 2017 edition of Black History Month, we should be mindful of it year round.

Lets not forget the young and old men and women, and institutions whose sacrifices made Black history viable as a bulwark against hatred and bias.

Lets not forget that the same factors which created slavery, Jim Crow and its modern version today, still exist. And if we are to have any future, we must fight against it.

By Leonard E. Colvin Chief Reporter

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Urban Notebook: Don't forget Emmett, Trayvon and Michael And Their Impact - Thenewjournalandguide

Iowa would be the latest state to adopt a stand-your-ground law if a proposal for revisions in gun regulations filed this week comes to pass.

The self-defense measure introduced in the Iowa House is part of a study bill that would bring sweeping changes to gun laws in the state.

Under House Study Bill 133, introduced Monday by Rep. Matt Windschitl, R-Missouri Valley, other provisions include removing the renewal requirement for permits to carry firearms and allowing minors of any age to handle a handgun in the presence of a parent or guardian.

Its got a lot of concepts in it that are trying to, I think, achieve the right balance, said Rep. Chip Baltimore, R-Boone, chairman of the Judiciary Committee that will hear the bill.

An Iowa law known as the castle doctrine currently protects the use of deadly force when a person acts in self-defense in his or her home, business or car.

The proposed bill allows for the use of deadly force for self-defense anywhere a gun owner can lawfully carry. The bill does not require a person to retreat from a threat or call police before using deadly force. About half the states have some version of a stand-your-ground law.

Cedar County Sheriff Warren Wethington said he supports the provision, saying retreating is not always an option.

Even if there is a stand-your-ground law, you still have to be able to articulate why someone was going to use deadly force or cause serious injury to you or a loved one, he said.

Johnson County Sheriff Lonny Pulkrabek, however, doesnt think the current law needs changing when it comes to reasonable force.

What Im concerned about with stand-your-ground is that it will make it much easier for someone to take someones life and simply say, I felt threatened, he said.

The issue of stand your ground gained national prominence after the Feb. 26, 2012, fatal shooting of Trayvon Martin, 17, at the hands of neighborhood watchman George Zimmerman, then 28, in Florida.

Zimmermans defense waived an immunity hearing on using the law and instead went to trial arguing self-defense. Although defense attorneys did not argue stand-your-ground at trial, standard jury instructions in homicide cases in the state include provisions of the law. A jury acquitted him of second-degree murder in July 2013.

Jeremy Brigham, executive director of Iowans for Gun Safety, said the Iowa bill would considerably weaken Iowas gun laws, which he evaluates based on their contribution to decreasing gun-related deaths and injuries. He said stand-your-ground opens up a can of worms.

How are you going to know if youre really defending yourself or if youre taking the initiative if you think youre being attacked? Brigham asked.

The proposed bill also would do away with a requirement that those with permits to carry weapons have to renew the permit every five years. Instead, the permit would be good for the life of the holder.

Pulkrabek and Linn County Sheriff Brian Gardner said the renewal process allows sheriffs offices to review permits to ensure something hasnt changed over the five years since the permit was issued that could potentially disqualify the holder from possessing the permit, such as a change in mental health or a series of drug and alcohol-related offenses.

There are people who were initially entitled to a permit, but during that five-year period, they became ineligible to have that permit, Gardner said.

Under the bill, new applicants also would be allowed to complete online training courses to demonstrate knowledge of firearm safety. Pulkrabek, however, said someone who carries a permit but has never handled a weapon could be a safety threat. Wethington agrees that hands-on training is vital.

I do not support internet online training, Wethington said, who said the permit classes he runs include four hours of class time and four hours of range time. You have time to take people that dont really have the skill set and make sure theyre safe before you put your name on (the permit). Not only is there the issue of public safety, but its just like driving a car you need to be proficient about what you do.

If adopted, the bill would remove age requirements for minors handling handguns under the supervision of a parent or guardian. Currently, Iowa law requires that a minor be at least 14 to handle a handgun.

Aaron Dorr, executive director of Iowa Gun Owners, said thats an arbitrary age limit.

Quite frankly, its absurd, he said. We want those kids to safely be taught to use a firearm. No one can do that better than a parent.

Brigham, however, questions the logic.

Kids dont understand the consequences of their actions, he said. They can handle rifles as it is, but handguns? Really? Thats not a hunting instrument.

Other provisions include removing a penalty for carrying a weapon while under the influence if someone is in his or her own home or business; keeping information on people who possess weapon permits confidential; allowing carrying firearms on snowmobiles and ATVs on property that doesnt belong to the carrier; and legalizing short-barreled rifles and shotguns.

The bill would establish state control over firearm regulations, essentially preventing cities and counties from enacting their own gun laws.

Baltimore said he thinks the bill has the votes to make it through the legislative funnel but concedes it could see some changes before it goes to the House.

Im not going to predict what the bill looks like when it gets to the floor, he said.

(James Q. Lynch contributed to this story.)

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Iowa gun bill seeks 'stand-your-ground' law - Quad City Times

Freed up by the Supreme Courts ongoing reluctance to engage in depth with the Second Amendment, the Fourth Circuit has taken it upon itself to rewrite Heller en banc. In a 104 decision, issued yesterday afternoon, the court upheld Marylands ban on both assault weapons and high capacity magazines. By so doing, it deprived the people of Maryland, the Carolinas, and the Virginias of the core protections to which the Constitution entitles them.

As Judge Traxlers dissent pointedly establishes, the majority achieved this transformation by contriving a heretofore unknown test, which is whether the firearm in question is most useful in military service. In effect, this test is designed to permit judges to determine that any weapon they might dislike is unprotected by the Second Amendment and can therefore be prohibited with impunity. Forget that Heller contains its own explicit tests. Forget the common use standard. Forget dangerous and unusual. Theres a new kid in town, and hes coming for your rifles.

What counts as most useful in military service under this rubric? Well ... everything, theoretically. Under the majoritys analysis, the dissenters contend, a settlers musket, the only weapon he would likely own and bring to militia service, would be most useful in military service undoubtedly a weapon of war and therefore not protected by the Second Amendment. Indeed, the most useful in military service rubric would remove nearly all firearms from Second Amendment protection as nearly all firearms can be useful in military service. A standard semi-automatic handgun is plausibly most useful in military service. So, too, is a hunting rifle. So is a sword. Perhaps the Fourth Circuit would like to strip the constitutional protection from those weapons, too?

That, of course would be absurd not only because it would render the Second Amendment meaningless as a check on state action, but because the Supreme Court has already delivered clear instructions to the contrary. In Caetano v. Massachusetts, which, recall, was decided per curiam, Justice Alito explained in no uncertain terms that even a stun gun capable of only non-lethal force is suitable for military use, but that this did not mean that stun guns could be banned. Alito sits on the Supreme Court, and was writing in concurrence with the other eight justices.

Perhaps the Fourth Circuit has forgotten where it sits in the pecking order. Or perhaps the Fourths majority is unfamiliar with Caetano. Certainly, its grasp of Heller is wanting. In pushing back against the majoritys newfangled test, the dissenters correctly note that Heller in no way suggests that the military usefulness of a weapon disqualifies it from Second Amendment protection. That is the majoritys singular concoction. Indeed it is. As for Hellers common use and dangerous and unusual standards, both of those are thrown casually out the window. The evidence, notes Judge Traxler, leads one to the unavoidable conclusion that popular semiautomatic rifles such as the AR-15 are commonly possessed by American citizens for lawful purposes within the meaning of Heller. Moreover, the record shows unequivocally that magazines with a capacity of greater than 10 rounds are commonly kept by American citizens, as there are more than 75 million such magazines owned by them in the United States. But the majority doesnt care about that, choosing to apply only the military standard that it has invented. Evidently, it does not matter to Judge King that the standard in Heller is dangerous and unusual [italics mine] i.e. that commonly owned, usual weapons cannot be prohibited on the grounds that they are particularly lethal. Nor, apparently, is King concerned that the Court ruled in Caetano that the relative dangerousness of a weapon is irrelevant when the weapon belongs to a class of arms commonly used for lawful purposes. He and his colleagues had a conclusion to reach, and by gum were they going to get there.

This legal folly notwithstanding, the majoritys characterization of the AR-15 as weapon of war is flat-out wrong. First, the opinion suggests that because the AR looks like an M-16 (a weapon that is not widely owned by the citizenry), it counts as a military firearm. Then, perhaps anticipating the objection that the AR-15 has never been issued to a soldier in American military history, it makes a series of preposterous claims as to the weapons rate of fire, the sole purpose of which is to mislead readers into believing that the model shares more than an aesthetic relationship with the its automatic cousins. Semi-automatic rifles, Judge King suggests, can fire at a rate of between 300 and 500 rounds per minute a capability that makes them virtually indistinguishable from a machine gun.

Judge Traxlers dissent loses no time in taking this claim apart, as well it should:

The majoritys assertion might surprise the United States Army, which sets the maximum effective rates of M4- and M16-series rifles operating in semi-automatic mode at 45 to 65 rounds per minute only about five rounds in five seconds (not 30 rounds as the majority believes). This is far slower than 150 to 200 rounds per minute that may effectively be fired by the same arms operating in fully automatic mode.

(Also surprised will be some of the experts at the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, who have testified to the same effect before Congress.)

The legal problem here is obvious: If the AR-15 is unacceptably dangerous because it is semi-automatic, then so must be every other gun that fires once per pull of the trigger including the handguns that were protected by Heller. If the majority is correct, writes Traxler, that the semiautomatic AR-15s rate of fire makes it a weapon of war outside the scope of the Second Amendment, then all semiautomatic firearms including the vast majority of semiautomatic handguns enjoy no constitutional protection since the rate of fire for any semiautomatic firearm is determined by how fast the shooter can squeeze the trigger.

Indeed. And a further question must present itself. Since 1934, automatic weapons have been treated differently under the law in the United States. Why? If semi-automatics that are protected by Heller are practically identical to automatics and if the common use standard is to be ignored as it has been here shouldnt the court be striking down the National Firearms Act? Words matter, especially in the law. Common cant mean unusual. And cant mean or. And parlor games can be played both ways: If we are to subject the plain terms of our precedents to the amateurish deliberations of motive-riven judges, there will be nothing to stop a different court from inverting the trick and striking down the NFA on the grounds that fully automatic weapons are so similar to semi-autos as to enjoy all the protections of normal civilian weapons.

Most worrying of all, the majority concludes its trail of destruction by playing preemptive games with the standard of review. Because it sets assault weapons outside of the Constitutions remit, the majority never reaches the question of scrutiny. But it nevertheless wants us to know that it would have applied intermediate scrutiny, and that the law in question would have passed without difficulty. This is extraordinary. For a start, if the majority had decided that the Second Amendment applied, it would have been duty bound to apply strict scrutiny. As Judge Traxler notes, once it is determined that a given weapon is covered by the Second Amendment, then obviously the in-home possession of that weapon for self-defense is core Second Amendment conduct and strict scrutiny must apply to a law that prohibits it. From where, one might ask, did he get that idea? The answer: From United States v. Hosford. And which Circuit decided that case? The Fourth.

Not content simply to break with its own precedent, the majority then has the gall to justify its departure as if Heller had never been issued. How else to account for the submission that Marylands prohibition on assault weapons does not restrict the core lawful purpose of the Second Amendment because the state hasnt touched other sorts of weapons an argument that was explicitly rejected in Heller? It would be one thing for the court to argue that a law might pass strict scrutiny; that, while unlikely to be vindicated, is at least a defensible position. But to deprive the plaintiffs of that chance, and then to justify that denial using reasoning that defies seminal Supreme Court precedent, is something else entirely.

Were this a First Amendment case, those vexed by its outcome could merely wait for the Supreme Court to step in and reverse it. In this instance, however, such relief seems unlikely at least in the foreseeable future. For whatever reason, the Court has been unwilling to take Second Amendment cases of late, a reluctance that has been caustically criticized by Justices Thomas and Scalia, both of whom have accused the judicial branch of treating the keeping and bearing of arms as a second-class right. One can only hope that Thomas is on the phone with the Fourth Circuit today. That was a complaint, he might say, not an invitation.

Charles C. W. Cooke is the editor of National Review Online.

Read more:
In upholding Maryland's 'assault weapons' ban, the court employed dubious legal reasoning to trample on American ... - National Review