When he wrote for The Progressive as a freelance journalist back in the 1980s, Mark G. Judge took a firm stand on the political left. With Judge currently in the media spotlight for his alleged participation in the sexual assault of Dr. Christine Blasey Ford by Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, we decided to share something of what he wrote for this magazine.
Reporting in November 1986 on a hunger strike taking place on the steps of the nation’s capital, Judge wrote of the veterans working for peace: “They have risked their lives for their country in Germany, France, and Vietnam. Now they are making the sacrifice again on the steps of the Capitol here in Washington, but the enemy is more elusive in this war: the Reagan Administration and its attitude toward Nicaragua.” He concluded the piece saying, “as the days drag on and they get physically weaker, the veterans hope their act and the sympathy it has aroused will affect White House policy for the better. As Brian Willson says, ‘I’m ready to die, but I’m ready to live, too.’ ”
Writing on socialism at a Billy Bragg concert in July 1988, Judge said: “Billy Bragg isn’t afraid of the S-word. Some of the people he has played for here are, though, and some resent hearing an English protest singer dabble in American politics. He says that's rubbish: ‘When you’re a cultural and political colony of the United States, as England is, it matters who's emperor.’ ”
In a January 1989 review of a posthumous edition of The Editor, the Bluenose, and the Prostitute, by H.L. Mencken, Judge wrote: “...it is good to have this blow-by-blow account of the censors at work, for Mencken was right when he pointed out, ‘Every censorship, however good its intent, degenerates inevitably into the sort of tyranny that the Watch and Ward Society exercised in Boston.’ ”
In December 1990, when reviewing a book on film, edited by Mark Crispin Miller, Judge noted that, “Seeing Through Movies teaches the reader to do just that at the movies, to pick out blatant product placement and thematic corruption in a once-great art form. You won’t watch films the same way again.”