This was one of those rare cases where I got to be in the same room as the star (Amy Goodman) and one of the directors (Carl Deal) at the close of the movie. This movie is in roadshow phase, making its debut outside the usual corporate distribution networks, making the rounds in art theaters such as Cinema 21, which is where we saw it. My friend Deb was hip to this movie and originally intended to see it in Seattle only to find her vacation, taking her through Portland, was timed perfectly for seeing this with Kirby (i.e. me). I’m glad it worked out that way.
Of course I’m familiar with Amy and Democracy Now!, and I was even one of those few Americans closely following the Timor business when Amy and Allan Nairn showed up there and got a beat up, nearly killed, only to find the toadies in Toad Hall weren’t interested in such matters, given they were obsessed with Domino Theory back then, one of those not-natively-American Eurasian ideologies, very slow (in the sense of retarded, as in “delinquent” (juvenile)).
However, even if I too was immersed in geopolitics back then (Belau and the Compact of Free Association saga was another one) as a writer and eventually editor for Asian-Pacific Isssues News (APIN), an AFSC publication (Portland office), I didn’t really think of Amy as Jewish. I was simply uninformed. But “Goodman” duh, right? So is John Goodman also Jewish? Sheesh, I have no clue. I’ll check later, if he so identifies.
But saying someone is “Jewish” provides no context or texture, as bad as calling someone “Christian” or saying one “believes in God”. Taken outside of any language games (that’s a technical philosophical term, not an insult or slight) these terms are quasi-meaningless, merely evocative. You’re welcome to “add meaning” from your side, but let’s admit (at least at first): there’s nothing there without the details, which actually do matter. So in Amy’s case: her ancestors, like Deb’s, were from Eastern Europe (as in Poland-Ukraine-Lithuania), like the people at the opening of American Pop, a favorite movie (Ralph Bakshi).
These are what Norman Finkelstein refers to as the American Jews of his childhood, whom he still adores in a nostalgic sense, whereas by 2026 that imagery has largely dissipated and we’re in some kind of twilight zone between paradigms, like when they change the sets during intermission at the theater. A liminal space. Very backrooms. The meaning of “Christian” isn’t fixed either. We study these shifts in “cultography” (similar to sociology). Here in Portland we have lots of “Quagans” (Quaker pagans) and “JooBoos” (Jewish Buddhists). Or did. These brands come and go.
Amy still talks about “leaders of the free world” (meaning those Toad Hall ego-maniacs) which in my mind timestamps her mindset. She and her contemporaries do indeed still imagine a lotta stuff I’ve long ago let go of. But that’s cuz I’m kinda alien, more of an of outlier, even more anomalous (note I don’t go out of my way to say “further left” — that’s too one-dimensional, per Marcuse), less mainstream. And being “less mainstream” than Democracy Now! is still saying something, right? But hey, as a teacher of Martian Math, I need to practice staying in character.
Amy was a big fan of the Phil Donahue Show, a highly rated daytime talk show that explored divisive topics, demonstrating the power of television to foment mind dynamics, process work, collective thinking. That kind of stuff is exciting to intelligent people (Amy is quite intelligent) and she sent a barrage of letters to Phil’s staff clamoring for some kind of position (she wound up in the audience, a position, where the topic was “being unemployed”). From that chapter, she entered radio. Her voice was recognizable and her content a beacon to a thinking audience. The rest is history.
Speaking of history, between my APIN days and more recently, I’ve continued tuning in Aaron Maté and Max Blumenthal, whom I see as carrying the torch beyond where the boomers did (I think of Amy as a boomer).
