Jodee Taylor: Ellsberg right on justice

Jodee Taylor

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Jodee Taylor

August 16, 2010

By JODEE TAYLOR jtaylor@record-eagle.com The Record Eagle Mon Aug 16, 2010, 07:15 AM EDT

What's kept me thinking the most since the 2010 Traverse City Film Festival isn't a film at all.

I was in the same room as Daniel Ellsberg.

Well, I was in the room with Daniel Ellsberg's giant head. He was in Lars Hockstad Auditorium via Skype following the screening of a documentary about him, "The Most Dangerous Man in America."

It just as easily could have been called "The Smartest Man in America." The guy blew me away.

He can quote Herodotus and Kermit the Frog in the same breath. He uses historical references to make his point. He remembers everything.

I don't know why this surprises me. He graduated from Harvard, then went to work at the Rand Corp., which makes a point of hiring the best and the brightest. Rand does research for Congress, the media, other countries. There are more than 30 Nobel laureates among its alumni, including Henry Kissinger and John Nash ("A Beautiful Mind"). The think tank has been around for 62 years.

The size of Ellsberg's head notwithstanding — it was about 25-feet high when projected on the screen, making it look like the three people on the stage could fit into one of his nostrils — Ellsberg was anything but inflated.

He's the guy who leaked the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times in 1970. The report, written while he worked at Rand, proved that Lyndon B. Johnson and other presidents lied about U.S. involvement in Vietnam. It was not only the beginning of the end of the Vietnam War, but it was the beginning of the end of Richard M. Nixon's presidency. Nixon was so excited to discredit Ellsberg, he had people break the law to get information about Ellsberg. Those same people broke into the Watergate Hotel.

Even though everyone in the room just had watched this tortuous story be told through interviews, film clips and Ellsberg's own impeccable recollections, Ellsberg didn't dwell on that chapter in history, except to remind us that it's all about justice.

He's been an activist for the past 40 years (one scene in the movie showed him being carted away in a police van). He's never stopped trying to drive home the point that it shouldn't matter if you're a kindergartner or a cop — you're not above the law, and you're equal to everyone else.

He reminded us that it's in our Constitution. No one is better than anyone else.

The clerk at the gas station deserves as much kindness and respect as the president. Everyone should be able to get health care. Each kid deserves an education, no matter what neighborhood he or she lives in. Your rush to get to work is no greater than my rush to get to work.

It is this attitude that defines social justice. Justice for all, no matter what your income level, age, skin color or nationality.

Then there's the point Ellsberg continued to hammer on when talking about the recent leaks that parallel his own: Just because you're a 10-year-old growing up in Afghanistan doesn't mean someone has the right to blow you up.

Jodee Taylor can be reached at jtaylor@record-eagle.com .