Some day I want to write an essay about history’s great lowlifes. Harvey Matusow would be one. John Doggett would be another. (Doggett was the guy who testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee that Anita Hill was an erotomaniac who made up fantasies that he was interested in her because she couldn’t handle being rejected by him.) These are men, sometimes women, who crave escape from their anonymity, who want to be noticed, and will do anything, destroy anyone, to get that notice. What fascinates me about these guys is how parasitic they are on one of the nobler aspects of democracy. Democratic movements and moments have a way of churning up anonymous men and women from the lower ranks, giving them […]

Who would you rather be? This guy? Or this guy? The twentieth century was the century of Matusow, Kazan, and other assorted informers, informants, and snitches, behind the Iron Curtain, in Nazi Germany, in Latin America, in the United States. Everywhere. Let the 21st be the century of Snowden, Manning, and more.