By: E&P Staff Syndicated columnist and Oakland pastor Byron Williams offers a tribute today to longtime journalist/jazz aficionado Nat Hentoff (and former E&P columnist), the man ?whose writings more than any other inspired me to want to write a column that emphasized the Constitution as the basis for America's public morality.?
Hentoff, a longtime writer for The Village Voice, was laid off by the paper on Dec. 30. He is regarded the preeminent commentator on the Constitution, and is a renowned jazz expert; in 2004, the National Endowment of the Arts named Hentoff as a NEA Jazz Master. He has written 30 books on various subjects.
?Reading Hentoff's columns became an epiphany allowing me see what Martin Luther King saw as he placed the Constitution at the bedrock of the Civil Rights Movement appealing to nation's better angels,? Williams writes. ?It was through Hentoff that I learned that the values embedded in Constitution must trump what I may feel personally. And it was possible to possess the oxymoronic position of defending the constitutional rights of someone with whom I disagreed intently.
?At 83, it's clear that Nat Hentoff still has something to say. I, for one, am pleased that he is still saying it.?
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