ABSTRACT
On January 21, 1980, the left-wing weekly Village Voice carried the following defense of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan: "We all have to go one day, but pray God let it not be over Afghanistan. There is no such country as Palestine, but since neither Alexander Cockburn nor his sponsors wish to soil their lips with the name of a country whose existence they deplore, "Palestine" is the preferred euphemism. In an autobiographical essay, Cockburn tells how he recognized that journalism was his destiny. A year and a half later, the fiercely independent and disobedient Cockburn was "suspended indefinitely" by the Village Voice for taking a $10,000 "fee" from the Institute for Arab Studies, an offshoot of the PLO. At this moment, he was absorbed by the Nation, ever eager to show itself deserving of the appellation conferred on it by William Buckley as "the cesspool of opinion journalism.".
