G21: In your article for BlueEar.com last month, "Pitbull Journalism," you assert that part of the reason that US journalists were so hard on Joyce Maynard was that they are "...firmly enmeshed in an economic system whose prime axioms are secrecy and obedience." Would you like to expand upon that and explain for us more fully what you mean?

JULES SIEGEL: In the days before black helicopters, some folks believed that Ft. Knox was empty, that the gold had all been spent or stolen. There was no way that you could go in there personally and check, they argued, and there was no reason to trust the government's word.

The value of the dollar was therefore merely the reflection of a conspiracy. It depended upon the secret being kept by its members, who had to obey the needs of this invented reality down to the least detail.

This theory reflects a certain economic reality. The value of the dollar is essentially imaginary. In Buddhist terms, it's a human construct. The dollar has a value because we believe it has a value.

Any token-based economy can melt down. That's just the way things work. The Maya predict that the Earth's magnetic field will reverse in 2011. There is a great deal of geological evidence that this has happened several times in the past. Since money is now essentially electronic data, what happens to the world economic system if all records disappear in some sort of immense electro-magnetic storm?

These constructs have no more substance than dreams, but not much is more precious to us. We're in a movie, playing various roles, and the worst sin is to say, "Wait a minute! This is just a movie!" They put you in the loony bin for that. Being sane means not being aggressively truthful about certain embarrassing logical fallacies and missing elements in the script.

Information is a commodity. The details of Salinger's life had more economic value in the information market because they were secrets. Joyce Maynard damaged the Salinger group's holdings. Writers don't get to make those decisions. They are reserved to publishers or their trusted editorial lackeys who have proved their loyalty by absolute obedience in word and deed.

The World's Magazine: g21.net Event #176: Jokers Wild MORE of The World's Magazine. AMERICAN DREAMS The Barnes & Noble Search Engine BLACK INK G21 WebTrips Cartoon Network Cartoons by Gaspirtz CultureCast The Dailies DAY ONE FAX NIKITA G21 ASIA G21 Digital Internet Postcards G21 Magazine Rack G21 NEWS G21 WORDS G21 SEX HOT LINKS HOUSE OF CARDS LONDON CALLING! The Main Event NEW YORK STATE ON DRUGS POWERSBOOKS POWERSSOUND Publisher's Note QUEER PLANET RADIO ACTIVE SILVER SURF TABLOID HART VOX POPULI LAST WEEK's EDITION For Deep Background visit the G21-Barnes & Noble Shop OR get great books at the G21 BARNES & NOBLE SEARCH ENGINE The Main Event HOME

G21: I have the sense that many readers just might go, "Huh?" to your response.

JULES SIEGEL: Why?

G21: While you make a strong case about the nature of the economic system, you have very little to say directly about a) the culture of secrecy you mean to criticize, and b) examples of enforced obedience to that culture. What evidence or examples can you provide that American journalism is "a culture of secrecy and obedience"?

JULES SIEGEL: I didn't say that. What I said was that journalists are "...firmly enmeshed in an economic system whose prime axioms are secrecy and obedience." It's the entire economic system that I'm talking about. Journalism is just another business.

Here's a single small example. Mike Gallagher, a reporter for the Cincinnatti Enquirer, published an extensive story in May 1998 revealing that Chiquita secretly controlled dozens of supposedly independent banana companies, endangered the health of its workers and neighbors with pesticides, bribed public officials, used violence against banana workers, and its chief executive made illegal political contributions.

After it was revealed that he illegally accessed Chiquita's voice mail system, the Cincinnati Enquirer fired him, apologized to Chiquita on its front page and paid the company $10 million. Gallagher plead guilty last September to felony charges. On July 16, he was sentenced to five years probation and 200 hours of community work and is currently unemployed.

How many more do you want? [See Press Resources at the end of this interview.-Ed.]

G21: I think that will do.

You note in your article that you wrote one of the few book reviews lauding Maynard's book "At Home in the World." Why do you believe your impressions and those of others reviewers were so far apart?

JULES SIEGEL: Partly, I think, because I really didn't know who she was or what she stood for. I was completely unaware of her fame. I live on an island in the lagoon formed by the main island of Cancun. I don't have a television set. If it hadn't been for the arrival of the Internet, I would still be reading stone tablets. I read her book on its own terms and I enjoyed it a lot. I liked her honesty. I admired her commerical success with the kind truthful and unpretentious writing I aspire to myself.

Joyce is someone who really rubs many media folk the wrong way. They're living in concrete filing boxes wired into a world that mostly exists only as electronic data on their CRT screens. Few humans are as well-informed as media workers. Yet they have to create absolute junk based on conventionally accepted lies. Some people can handle this. They like the good parts of being in the media enough to discount the bad parts, which are not all that bad. Others are very angry.

Now here's Joyce. She's published in slick magazines while still in high school. She's exquisitely beautiful. At eighteen, she appears on the cover of The New York Times Magazine looking cuter than Lolita -- and she's a pundit! That's just how her career starts. She catches the writer they all admire most (or are required to say they admire). Then she succeeds as a free-lance writer and organic heart throb. She actually raises three children while living on a farm in Vermont (purchased with the advance on her first book, written at eighteen) by writing not Pulp Fiction, but the ordinary events of her own life.

Talk about annoying.

G21: Your answer seems to imply that there was a certain degree of jealousy involved in the panning of Ms. Maynard's book. Is that what you're saying?

JULES SIEGEL: I wouldn't put in terms of conscious personal jealousy but rather in the way her success at achieving an independent lifestyle calls into question her critics' own submission to the machine and their failure to achieve their own goals.

G21: "Pit Bull Journalism," especially considering your attack on the accuracy of Pulitzer Prize winner Maureen Dowd's article on Maynard, could be considered a poison pen letter to the American journalistic establishment. Was that your intent?

JULES SIEGEL: A poison pen letter is an emotionally charged document expressing passionate anger, often in highly distorted and vicious language. I just pointed out the various errors in rather reasonable terms and made mocking faces. I do write vividly, so perhaps you might want to call it an indictment, to give it the right tone.

Maureen Dowd's column, however, is a poison pen letter. It has all the hysterical qualities, the outrageously unfair metaphors, the sarcastic shrieks and sneers. My wife, Anita Brown, commented that it reminded her of a fighting drunk. What did Joyce Maynard do to provoke being called a leech -- an invertebrate that arouses instinctive disgust?

The column was not merely unfair and coarse, it was also a complete fake from beginning to end. Joyce never made Salinger's letters public. Sotheby's kept them in a secure room where they were seen only by four qualified prospective buyers -- and Maureen Dowd, who was the only one who talked about what they contained. So there was no scandal to begin with. It was just something invented by the New York Timesand ratified by Maureen Dowd, who knew when she wrote her column that her principal point was false.

This was a great issue that I knew was going to get a lot of attention and I jumped on it. My intent was to get out there and avenge the lady's honor while the crowd cheered my dashing performance. Worked out just the way I wanted, as in being interviewed right here in this medium at hand now. Honi soit qui mal y pense.This is my Order of the Garter.

G21: I like that. So what types of responses have you received to "Pit Bull Journalism," from both the public and the press?

JULES SIEGEL: I received a gratifying number of letters from individuals and reporters who warmly applauded my story. There was no published response in the press, however, although both Ethan Casey (BlueEar.com editor) and I saw hints that some of the follow-up auction coverage was influenced by what I wrote. Please don't ask me to be specific. It wasn't anything I'd want to point out in any detail -- just snips of language and a certain way of looking at the issues.

I also developed a new editorial relationship -- London Observer/GuardianForeign News Service, for whom I just wrote an article on Cancun. All in all, [the article] brought my name to the attention of thousands of journalists and other interested people.

G21: What new projects are you working on now?

JULES SIEGEL: iSyndicate.com will shortly begin syndicating Today's Mail, a weekly humor/opinion column. My agent, Joseph Regal has begun negotiations for the publication of The Real Mexico, the book I came to Mexico to write in 1981, and am now finally ready to deliver. I'm working with Cameron Mott on a definitive timeline for Smile, Brian Wilson's lost teenage symphony to God, that I think will make an excellent book. Just the usual stuff.

The TeknoSurf AdWave

JULES SIEGEL: My theories about why the Timesencouraged its people to write such distorted and negative stories about Joyce Maynard.

I think this came from the top as a result of someone in Salinger's circle making a complaint.

Maureen Dowd is not someone who invents her own editorial policies. This was quite clear from her coverage of the Monica Lewinsky scandal, when she shifted from condemning Clinton to condemning Starr in perfect synchronization with the Times'own policy shifts. The relentlessly unfair nature of the attacks by the paper's reporters strongly hints that this was a matter of policy, as they were well aware that there was no scandal to begin with.

Most of Peter Applebome's initial story was devoted to explaining that the contents of the letters were not being made public and could not be made public. Yet the lead made it seem as if some new breach of Salinger's privacy was taking place. Not until a few days before the auction did Clyde Haberman reveal that the letters were never on public display.