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Why has slamming a ball with a racquet become so obsessive a pleasure for so many of us? It seems clear to me that a primary attraction of the sport is the opportunity it gives to release aggression physically without being arrested for felonious assault.

Nat Hentoff

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Nat Hentoff
Age: 91 †
Born: 1925
Born: June 10
Died: 2017
Died: January 7
Columnist
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Historian
Journalist
Music Critic
Music Historian
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Boston
Massachusetts
Nat
Nathan Irving Hentoff
Nathan Hentoff
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Ball
Assault
Seems
Release
Aggression
Without
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Physically
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I wrote the column. I - you know, - the column simply said that [Clay] Felker is destroying this paper. And I heard that he was about ready to fire me, but two other people on The Voice interceded and, fortunately, he had a very short attention span, so I wasn't fired.
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I got Joan Baez to talk and Alan Ginsberg and some of the guys in the band. And by the end of the piece, another emissary came and said, `Bob [Dylan] is willing to speak to you now.' And I said with great pleasure, `No, thanks. The piece is over.'
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I would bet there is no place in the United States where the First Amendment would survive intact.
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Inside that quietude there was the firmest of wills. [Bill Shawn] knew exactly what he wanted to do.
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I don't think [Bill Clinton] does anything - I don't think it's ill will. I don't think he's evil in the sense that he hates the Bill of Rights. He does what he figures will help him politically.
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I went to school at a place that also shaped my life, Boston Latin School.
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My - mine is based on the fact that Bill Clinton has done - and I'm - this sounds like hyperbole, but he has done more harm to the Constitution and the Bill of Rights than any president since John Adams.
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When I speak to students, I tell them why we have a First Amendment. I tell them about the Committees of Correspondence. I tell them how in a secret meeting of the Raleigh Tavern in Virginia, Thomas Jefferson and Patrick Henry, who did not agree with each other, started a Committee of Correspondence.
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A good many people voted for [Barack] Obama, and I'm not only talking about the black vote. A lot of people voted for Obama because of our history of racial discrimination in this country.
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I write a column for The Village Voice, which I've done since time immemorial, and occasionally - and books. And I occasionally write minor notes for record albums and occasional articles.
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He - A.J.[Muste] never got much credit, never got much attention. For example, I wrote a biography of him and nobody ever heard of it.
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You see that in his foreign policy [Barack] Obama lacks a backbone - both a constitutional backbone and a personal backbone.
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One of the worst elements of Obama's career, which no one talks about, is that he voted twice for a bill that said, if there is a botched abortion, if the child emerges from the womb alive, it should be okay to kill the baby. We have elected a president - twice! - who agrees with infanticide.
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As Harry Blackmun said when he wrote Roe v. Wade, `Once a child is born, the child has basic constitutional rights: due process, equal protection of the laws.'
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A.J. [Muste] was a - as he likes to say, a radical pacifist.
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That is what is happening with the Tea Parties. I wrote a column called The Second American Revolution about the fact that people are acting for themselves as it happened with the Sons of Liberty which spread throughout the colonies. That was a very important awakening in this country.
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Being pro-life is an essential part of being a writer.
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Fortune ought to be a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master.
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The second wife [Trudi Bernstein] - the best part of that union, our two daughters, and that lasted about five years.
Nat Hentoff
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Bill Clinton outshines John Adams in that regard.
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