“The Last Angry Man” by Arnie Sherr

Are we hiding in solitude; certainly there are no group outcries! 

By Arnie Sherr

 

January 9, 2009: In 1956 Rosetta Books published a novel written prolifically by Gerald Green and known famously as The Last Angry Man. I’ve not read his book but I do remember, as if yesterday, the movie produced in 1959 about a doctor, Sam Abelman, – inspired by his father Dr. Samuel Greenberg.

 

Gerald Green was born in <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 />Brooklyn in 1922, where his father Dr. Samuel Greenberg practiced medicine. Green took an undergraduate degree from Columbia University, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa, served in World War II and returned to Columbia for an M.S. in Journalism. He edited news copy for the International News Service before becoming one of the first news writers at the NBC television network. Joining the staff of the Today show, when Dave Garroway was its host, Green became involved in all facets of the, as writer, producer and director.

 

In 1950, Green published his first novel, His Majesty O'Keefe, co-written with Lawrence Klingman. He established himself as a major novelist in 1956 with the publication of The Last Angry Man, a passionate novel that reflects his experience in television and his love for his father, who died in 1952; Green wrote both the 1959 film adaptation and its 1974 television remake. He is also the author of The Sword and the Sun and The Hostage Heart. His long-running involvement in film and television resulted in his Emmy Award-winning teleplay for Holocaust, which adapted as a novel and scripts for Fatal Judgment, Wallenberg: A Hero's Story and Kent State. Gerald Green continues to write and produce television and feature films.

 

Dr. Sam Abelman is tough and irascible, but he is dedicated healer and a good man guided by a belief in basic human decency -- the right doctor for the poor and disadvantaged who fill the slums and tenements of Brooklyn. His relationship with his patients is sometimes explosive, especially as the world is changing and becoming more dangerous.

 

The title “The Last Angry Man” became a literary platform for many who wished to make statements of anger; attempts to wake-up an apathetic public at least for their chosen agenda.

 

Lawyer Andrew Vachss takes to novels to fight child abuse, another “Angry Man,” if you will, in novels appropriately named Flood from 1985, or Strega; his latest—and his private-eye hero, Burke, throws it right in your face:

 

“I went into the first door I came to, checked the fat guy sitting at a register by the opening, and saw row after row of sterile-looking aisles ... I made two circuits before I found the back section marked Adults Only. Maybe the boss had a sense of irony—it had nothing but pictures of kids, books about kids, and magazines with kids. Nice stuff—everything from naked kids romping in the sun to a little boy with his hands and legs hog-tied behind him being double sodomized.”

 

Another “One Angry Man” was Keith Olbermann who on June 23, 2008 mercilessly and feeling justified attacked President Bush:

 

After having another sensation, unrelated to neurology—a feeling, he later recalled, that was “like being hit by lightning.” Keith Olbermann sat down at his computer and began to write. After an hour, he had the first draft of a lacerating indictment of Bush, a twelve-minute-long (eighteen pages in teleprompter script) j ’accuse, addressed personally to the President.

 

“Mr. Bush, at long last, has it not dawned on you that the America you have now created includes ‘cold-blooded killers who will kill people to achieve their political objectives’?” Olbermann wrote. “They are those in—or formerly in—your employ, who may yet be charged some day with war crimes.”

 

The denunciation hit the high notes of the most fevered antiwar rhetoric, accusing Bush (he of the “addled brain”), his alleged puppet master (“the American snake-oil salesman Dick Cheney”), and the “tragically know-it-all minions,” “sycophants,” and “mental dwarves” who serve them in the Administration of perpetrating a “panoramic and murderous deceit” on America and the world. Intelligence was faked, WMD’s were imagined, Iraq was laid waste, and American freedoms were trashed.

 

“Mr. Bush, I hate to break it to you six and a half years after you yoked this nation and your place in history to the wrong war, in the wrong place, against the wrong people, but the war in Iraq is not about you. . . . It is not, Mr. Bush, about your golf game! And, sir, if you have any hopes that next January 20th will not be celebrated as a day of soul-wrenching, heartfelt thanksgiving, because your faithless stewardship of this presidency will have finally come to a merciful end, this last piece of advice . . . when somebody asks you, sir, about your gallant, noble, self-abnegating sacrifice of your golf game so as to soothe the families of the war dead. This advice, Mr. Bush: Shut the hell up!” more…

 

Moreover, there are many “Angry Men and Women” in America, none being the Last! Yet the only angry outcries I am hearing emanate most loudly from the pundits that over-tell the so-called “Breaking News” as though each American listens individually until they have all been informed. Their redundancy seems to quell America’s anger by simulating active demonstrations and protests as of past years when network TV news shows like CNN and Fox News were not even a premonition for the future. Today, because of their presence America feels needless to rise above and march on the Capitol; boycott companies that demonstrate anti-American practices (I.e., Bank of America issuing credit cards to illegal’s, Exxon/Mobil raping America while earning outrageous profits for the beckoning greediness of their stock holders a the very expense of the American people), and more.

 

It’s true, “We the People” spoke loudly on November 4th; we overwhelmingly elected Barack Obama and effectively changed the face of the Senate and the House of Representatives and now it seems, America is content to wait and see. A representative landslide set the stage for January 20, 2009 when history shall be served in Washington as Barack Obama’s inauguration will be witnessed globally by the largest audience ever to do so.

 

But I ask “angrily,” have we spoken loudly enough? Barack Obama has yet to practice his preaching’s and promises; of that we will give him due slack. But what of the House and Senate; how long will “We the People” continue to give them slack? Even now, whilst the President Elect tries to bring both parties together there continues to be resistance. The scars of bi-partisanship run long – run deep! The wounds of divisive attitudes are so engrained in political DNA that it is genetically inherent of Washington’s elected; only a recycling of the old to the new will change its face intricately.                  

While America’s new DNA is corporate deception and fraud; Wall Street greed; gubernatorial treason and ethical breakdown; a ‘cheat-if-you-can-get-away-with-it’ ideology; lack-luster government oversight; trade policies that have and continue to denigrate the very fibre of America’s manufacturing base and economic stability; a financial industry that feels no allegiance to a Nation who’s people supported their growth and profit goals only to act against the welfare of those who ultimately gave them global status, “We the People” raise not so much as a decibel above normal to tell the House and the Senate – “Shape up or ship out.”  

 

The following link will provide the mailing addresses, phone and fax numbers for every Congressperson and Senator with the exception of those sworn in today. I urge all who read this angry message to act in-kind by writing to as many, if not all who sit within each house. God bless America. 

 

 

Click here or copy and paste to your browser: http://www.usa.gov/Contact/Elected.shtml