Books in Brief

Seize the Time: The Story of the Black Panther Party and Huey P. Newton, by Bobby Seale (Random House, 429 pp., $6.95). If the National Socialists hadn’t quite made it, if Germany had clamped down hard before the Nazis got too strong, if Paul Goebbels had decided to write a history of his jailed Führer and the wonderful mission of their peaceful, loving party, we’d have read Seize the Time forty years ago. Or something like it. Real charmers, these cats. Like Huey, who once held a door open for a “sister” and actually let a white girl behind her come in too. As Bobby says: “That’s just one point to show Huey’s humanism toward all other human beings.” Huey and Bobby lay out the party’s goals and tactics: “We fight racism with solidarity. We fight capitalism with basic socialism. We fight imperialism with proletarian internationalism.” Got it straight, pig? See Bobby hustle: “I was hollering, ‘Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung. Get your Red Book. All you free speechers up here who lost Mario Savio must read the Red Book and do it like the Red Guards did it.’ ” Hear Bobby talk back: “The pig sees the gun. The nigger told the pigs that if they act wrong or get down wrong, I’m going to kill you. I’ll defend myself. But I like this crazy nigger. I like him because he’s good. He doesn’t take bullshit.” Meet Bobby’s buddies: Charles Garry, the “Lenin of the courtroom”; Eldridge and Kathleen Cleaver (color them ludicrous); Minister of Culture Emory Douglas, et al. Groove on Bobby’s insightful devil-theorism: “The Nixon-Agnew-Mitchell Administration— hand in hand with the Reagans, the Daleys, the Hoffmans, the Carswells, Rockefellers, DuPonts, the Bank of America and other exploiters—moves closer and closer to open fascism.” Chuckle along with Bobby at the sister who wouldn’t let the brother make her because he didn’t know the Ten Point Program word for word, until wise old Bobby patiently lectured: “Some of the brothers learn slowly, you know. And they know making love a lot better than anything else.” Watch Bobby and Bennett Cerf rake in the bread from white suckers who’ll lap up this garbage. Lennie Bernstein will love it.

D. J. C. BRUDNOY

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Seize the Time: The Story of the Black Panther Party and Huey P. Newton, by Bobby Seale (Random House, 429 pp., $6.95). If the National Socialists hadn’t quite made it, if Germany had clamped down hard before the Nazis got too strong, if Paul Goebbels had decided to write a history of his jailed Führer and the wonderful mission of their peaceful, loving party, we’d have read Seize the Time forty years ago. Or something like it. Real charmers, these cats. Like Huey, who once held a door open for a “sister” and actually let a white girl behind her come in too. As Bobby says: “That’s just one point to show Huey’s humanism toward all other human beings.” Huey and Bobby lay out the party’s goals and tactics: “We fight racism with solidarity. We fight capitalism with basic socialism. We fight imperialism with proletarian internationalism.” Got it straight, pig? See Bobby hustle: “I was hollering, ‘Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung. Get your Red Book. All you free speechers up here who lost Mario Savio must read the Red Book and do it like the Red Guards did it.’ ” Hear Bobby talk back: “The pig sees the gun. The nigger told the pigs that if they act wrong or get down wrong, I’m going to kill you. I’ll defend myself. But I like this crazy nigger. I like him because he’s good. He doesn’t take bullshit.” Meet Bobby’s buddies: Charles Garry, the “Lenin of the courtroom”; Eldridge and Kathleen Cleaver (color them ludicrous); Minister of Culture Emory Douglas, et al. Groove on Bobby’s insightful devil-theorism: “The Nixon-Agnew-Mitchell Administration— hand in hand with the Reagans, the Daleys, the Hoffmans, the Carswells, Rockefellers, DuPonts, the Bank of America and other exploiters—moves closer and closer to open fascism.” Chuckle along with Bobby at the sister who wouldn’t let the brother make her because he didn’t know the Ten Point Program word for word, until wise old Bobby patiently lectured: “Some of the brothers learn slowly, you know. And they know making love a lot better than anything else.” Watch Bobby and Bennett Cerf rake in the bread from white suckers who’ll lap up this garbage. Lennie Bernstein will love it.

D. J. C. BRUDNOY