Mixing It Up - Digest - The Morning News

Reading • Mixing It Up

Man of letters and contrarian Ishmael Reed has a substantial body of literary work; this book anthologizes various of Reed’s op-eds for The New York Times and Playboy. Reed writes:

In the following chapters, I mix it up with the media bullies. Lewis Hyde, before a meeting of the MacArthur Fellows, traced the idea of ownership. At one time, ideas were owned by the Church and the Crown. Up until recently, media ownership was in the hands of multinationals. With cyberspace, ownership of knowledge belongs to the people. Writin’ is fightin’!

—Robert Birnbaum, Jul. 7, 2008