("Quid coniuratio est?")
INTERVIEW WITH SHERMAN SKOLNICK -- MAY 17, 1995
On May 17, 1995, I interviewed, by telephone, Mr. Sherman Skolnick of the Citizens' Committee to Clean-up the Courts [CCCC]. The following is my summary of that interview. (Note that in the following, I neither necessarily agree nor disagree with either all or some of Mr. Skolnick's statements.)
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CONSPIRACY NATION:
What's going on these days with Whitewater?
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
What's happening is, there's a statute of limitations deadline,
that's May 25th, '95, to do something about White House aide
Bruce Lindsey. He's mentioned in different stories as having been
fingered by uh -- Neal Ainsley, I think the name is? So, many
expected that he was the next to be indicted. And he occupies the
office, in the White House, between the oval office and Al Gore.
So he's not a "nobody".
So, if between now and the 25th, Kenneth Starr causes Mr. Lindsey to be indicted, then, the way the dominoes are falling, the next one would fall on the oval office: Clinton himself.
And so, it may be that there's a great deal of nervousness now in the White House.
CONSPIRACY NATION:
One thing I've always noticed is, sometimes, on your recorded
commentaries {1}, you'll say "Our chairman", okay? You'll say,
"This person was interviewed by 'our chairman.'" Who's "The
chairman"?
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Well, that's me. The point is, I don't like to talk in the first
person, 'cuz I'm a spokesman for the group, and this isn't a
personal commentary. I don't know if it would sound right if I
said "me", "I", and stuff like that. I talk in the third person
so that, irrespective of who is delivering the commentary to
the recorded tape, it would sound more objective.
CONSPIRACY NATION:
Okay.
I wanted to get into this idea of "The New World Order". For somebody like me, that I, essentially, I come from the "left", as my background (although, recently, I've been reading a lot of different sources; not just from the "left") -- but I can understand where, somebody from the "left" would automatically respond to this idea of "The New World Order" as...
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Well, you know, when I used to give speeches in front of colleges
several years ago, I had this favorite saying that some of the
students understood. I says, "You know, they try very hard (the
press does, and the FBI and the rest of 'em) to see to it that
there's no genuine left wing in the United States. So that, if
the United States was an airplane, it'd be the only airplane of
its kind in the world, that flies with only one wing! -- and it
ain't 'left.'"
That used to help the students try to understand that.
CONSPIRACY NATION:
Yeah.
But my idea for, say, some readers of... that maybe think that this, "The New World Order" is kind of a crazy thing: you know, one way of looking at it is (this is from something that Noam Chomsky wrote in a small booklet called The Prosperous Few and the Restless Many {2} ):
Throughout history, the structures of government have tended to coalesce around other forms of power -- in modern times, primarily around economic power. So, when you have national economies, you get national states. We now have an international economy and we're moving towards an international state. {3}
Okay? And that's right from Noam Chomsky!
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Yeah, but let me say something.
CONSPIRACY NATION:
I know that you're skeptical about Noam Chomsky.
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Well... Here's the problem. There's various commentators, some of
'em right-wing, some of 'em mainstream, who talk that "Big
Brother" is "leftist". And they even say that Ted Kennedy, the
Senator from Massachusetts, is "liberal" and "leftist", and that
"Big Brother" is... the right wing likes to call it "socialist".
What's wrong with it is, none of 'em ever bothered to check the definition. Socialism means the working people, the common people, the common folks, owning the instruments of production and communication. And it has nothing to do with these other interpretations that these right-wing radio announcers put on it, and so on.
I mean, one of the things that's little-known is, early in his career, J. Edgar Hoover, as the head of the FBI, saw to it that no "lefties" were allowed to own a radio broadcast license.
So when these other right-wingers and such that say that the news media is "left wing" and "liberal" -- I really don't know what they're talking about. If labor activists, trade union activists -- true "lefties" -- are, historically have not been allowed to own and operate radio and TV broadcast licenses in the United States, then what is this idea that the media, you know, headquartered in New York, is "left wing", "Big Brother", "socialist" agenda?
CONSPIRACY NATION:
Yeah! I agree with you. I think there's a real confusion in
terms, as far as -- you know, they're calling people "from the
left" like, as you say, East Coast liberal, ivy-league types.
These are the same people that, they've never really worked. I
mean, I've had tons of professors that, I've talked with them,
and they've said that, basically, they just went to college and
became professors. And they've got no connection with the
average, working-class person.
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Yeah. And the media and others often describe "what the working
people are all about," what... They use the word out of Orwell:
"Big Brother". And basically, George Orwell (that's another thing
that they don't go into) -- Orwell, in writing his book, 1984,
with all these names that he created -- "Big Brother" and all
that -- he basically was trying to put down the left wing. And so
right-wingers, and narrow-minded types, and rednecks, and all
these other types that don't want to be sophisticated: whenever
there's something that helps ordinary people, they right away
say, "It's 'Big Brother'! We've gotta put an end to it."
It's like now, the current issue of Time magazine has got a hatchet on the cover, and "Cut The Budget". What do they want to do? I mean, they want to cut food stamps. And yet, they don't point out that the whole food stamp program wouldn't pay for one nuclear aircraft carrier.
CONSPIRACY NATION:
Yeah! That's somethin' else: that, whenever it comes to where
people say, "Let's reduce the size of government," they always
go after women with babies, or anybody that's...
SHERMAN SKOLNICK:
Or they talk about "the welfare system" -- where it's mostly
rural whites. They never like to put on the television the rural
whites in the state of Maine that are absolutely impoverished.
Or the rural whites in southern Illinois. But they point to the
black population in the major cities as if all of them are on
welfare!
And the other thing: you know, I like to, I like to get into these things. Because I'll tell ya why: the blacks are some of the hardest-working people in the world. And I live in an all- black neighborhood, myself. (And, you know, I'm livin' here, since the neighborhood is here and I didn't move away. Some of my other neighbors and such, they moved away to the prosperous northwest suburbs.) But the point is, 5 o'clock in the morning, all the lights go on; everybody is gettin' up, to go to work. This idea that blacks are all on welfare and are lazy and are not working is a terrible, terrible, erroneous stereotype. They do among the hardest work in the post office, and in the back departments of the hotels, together with the Hispanics. I like to tell this joke that, if they don't stop beating blacks on the head, their mail isn't gonna arrive! You know what I'm saying?
And who punches out most of the checks, the percentage of blacks that are working in the Social Security Administration. I mean, they're operatin' the machinery, they're doin' the hard work. I don't understand these people, that want to beat these people on the head!
CONSPIRACY NATION:
Well, you know what it is: it's because they're the least
powerful.
[...to be continued...]
---------------------------<< Notes >>--------------------------- {1} Recorded commentaries from the Citizens Committee to Clean-up the Courts, Sherman H. Skolnick, chairman, can be heard by dialing (312) 731-1100 and (312) 731-1505.
{2} The Prosperous Few and the Restless Many by Noam Chomsky. Berkeley: Odonian Press, 1993. ISBN 1-878825-03-8
{3} Ibid., page 7, my copy.
I encourage distribution of "Conspiracy Nation."
Coming to you from Illinois -- "The Land of Skolnick"