But it doesn't seem to have gotten much attention. So for anyone who missed it:
Words of Hate ...
... will end on a N.J. state level with the revoking of its poet laureate
With what an aide described as “not a lot of pomp and circumstance,” New Jersey Gov. James McGreevey signed legislation on July 2 abolishing the post of state poet laureate.
The position had most recently been held by longtime Newark, N.J., resident Amiri Baraka. Although the poet’s name is not contained in the legislation, Bill S-21/1981 is clearly intended to remove the controversial writer, whose works have been denounced as anti-Semitic.
In his famous poem “Black Art,” Baraka — born Everett LeRoi Jones in 1934 — lists the “jewlady” among his enemies, and calls for artists to produce “poems that kill” and “dagger poems in the slimy bellies of the owner-jews.”
In another piece, “The Black Man Is Making New Gods,” the poet wails that “Atheist Jews double crossers stole our secrets. ... They give us to worship a dead Jew and not ourselves.”
But it was Baraka’s “Somebody Blew Up America,” a poem about the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, that sparked demands for his ouster by public officials and a coalition of Jewish, African-American and Hindu groups in New Jersey.
In that poem, Baraka writes: “Who knew the World Trade Center was gonna get bombed/ Who told 4000 Israeli workers at the Twin Towers to stay home that day/Why did Sharon stay away?”
Baraka was predictably pissed.
That decision is deemed unacceptable by Baraka, who announced during a July 3 press conference that he intends to sue the state and the governor for violating his free-speech rights, and to collect his yet unpaid $10,000 stipend.
Arriving at the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Newark an hour after after he was scheduled to speak, Baraka told a cheering crowd of some 100 African-Americans, including 10 members of the New Black Panther Party, that New Jersey politicians are “replacing democracy with government censorship and neofascist policy.”
He also dismissed those who have branded him an anti-Semite, and blasted the New Jersey branch of the Anti-Defamation League for its “characteristic dishonesty” in claiming that an attack on Israel is an attack on Jews. The poet even quoted a rabbi explaining that “Zionism is not Judaism.”
Baraka would go on, in the course of a meandering speech, to accuse Jews of controlling the Hollywood film industry and to call the mayor of Orange Township, Mims Hackett, Jr., “the Jew whore of Orange” for voting in the state legislature to repeal Baraka’s position.
Well, what did we expect? At least he's consistent.
