I used to think Rosa Parks was some brave little old black lady that wasn’t gonna take that crap anymore and became a hero.
I was pretty pissed a few years ago when I learned she was really active in the civil rights movement and the whole thing was staged.
They still had a point, but still 
It was still quite brave, and a clever political ploy. She had plenty of reason to be bitter. A lot of people had reason to be bitter back then.
I’d forgotten about that being a setup. I don’t think I’d ever even heard of it prior to her death. But yeah, it was a good effort for a good cause, so all’s well that ends well in that regard.
Still, she was plenty happy to try to make people who had caused her no harm feel badly, so I have a hard time feeling charitably toward her as a person. Basically, she was just a jerk who managed to have a heroic impact on civil rights.
I’ve never quite understood the “it was a set up” claim, unless Rosa Parks and the NAACP somehow had the power to set up decades of legalized segregation under Jim Crow laws just to make a point (in which case, good show). It’s true they were looking for a challenge case, and this probably was on Rosa’s mind when she kept the seat, but it’s equally true that she was asked to give up her seat to a white man, she was tired from the post Thanksgiving-early Christmas season alterations at the department store where she worked as a seamstress, and when she refused to give up her seat (to a white man who didn’t particularly want it, incidentally) the bigoted horse’s ass of a busdriver* called the cops, who arrested and fingerprinted her**. There really was no “set up”.
Montgomery being small and Alabama not much larger I’ve known a good many of the people associated with that arrest. Most notably are
*The Bus Driver- his grandson was one of my closest friends in college, and per his daughter and his grandkids he was a sweet old man to his family and strangers but a total bigot who railed about “uppity niggers” til his dying day
**The officer who fingerprinted her and is in a very famous picture of her fingerprinting. He left the police force for law school, became a very successful corporate lawyer in a small town in south Alabama where he lives next door to my brother. He and my brother were golf buddies until age and ill health left him largely housebound, but his mind’s still good. Unlike the bus driver, he became increasingly liberal.
Yep, that’s the one. He was at the conference promoting his 200th book.
When authors stop by my store unannounced, they generally fall into one of these categories:
The Rearranger: Just as you described. He’ll carefully turn his book face-out on the shelves or move it to a more prominent location when nobody’s looking.
The Sneak: She’ll sidle on up to the counter and say, “Do you have the book XXX by so-and-so?” (their book, of course). She’ll ask a bunch of questions to see what you think of the book and how you promote it. She may or may not announce herself as the author.
The Greeter: I must confess to being one of these most of the time. If the store has any of my books in stock, I’ll walk up to the store manager, introduce myself, and ask if they’d like me to sign their stock.
The Stealther: You don’t find out it was an author until after she’s left, or somebody recognizes her.
For some reason, the sneak is the only one that bothers me. Just be upfront, okay? I’ve never had a rearranger of the level you describe, though. Most of them are just putting the books face-out, which isn’t a big deal.
So, do they sneak around autographing books on the shelves without telling anyone? Because that’d be kind of cool.
Phyllis Currott does. She told me she does that because then they can’t be stripped and sold back to the publisher. Not sure what that means for the poor bookstore manager with 30 extra copies of The Love Spell, but there you go.
I do this, I have to admit.
I’ve always thought that the person that wrote that rider missed his calling as a comedy writer!
VCNJ~
Maybe your being pendantic or maybe I am.
But it WASNT just some random little old lady that wasn’t going to take the crap anymore, like simple history lessons liked to tell or at least used to tell/imply.
They had a point, a damn good one.
And finding out she may have been a real jerk doesn’t make the “dream” shine any better either !
Its kind of like finding out Christopher Columbus was a geographical retard and that Indian guy weeping about the trash all over his “homeland” was really some jewish guy with dark skin (I don’t know what ethnicity he really was).
It just takes something out of the “dream”.
IMO of course!
I’ve never had anyone do that in my store (at least, not that I know of). It would annoy me, because I enjoy meeting other writers, and I always like to put “Autographed Copy” stickers on the signed books.
Not necessarily true. I’ve returned signed books before – different publishers have different rules. I can pretty well guarantee any publisher or distributor would accept back a signed copy from a prominent author, although they’d be looking for excuses not to accept returns on the poor-selling books.
And for “stripped” mass-market paperbacks, all you’re sending back is the front cover, so there’s no need for it to be in resellable condition. Typically, authors sign on the title page anyway, so there wouldn’t be a way for the publisher to know whether a stripped book had been signed.
I’m disappointed. She always seemed classy and elegant to me. (I guess class + elegance != good character.)
I believe you. I’m reporting her reason given to me, not reality from a bookseller’s point of view. But thanks, now I feel better for the seller “stuck” with books that don’t move!
As others have pointed out, it wasn’t so much a “staged” event where everybody was just “playing” their roles as a part of a pre-planned organized strategy to challenge the segregation laws. This is not an uncommon practice. For example, the Scopes Monkey Trial came about because the ACLU got together beforehand with Scopes to deliberately break the Tennessee law forbidding the teaching of evolution. It wasn’t because Scopes on the spur of the moment said, “Screw the law, I feel like teaching evolution today.”
good grief. nevermind.
Asshole. He was working a show on location in a high school, and rented a house next door to be away from the kids. My daughter who was in the cast actually bought his book to get him to sign, which he did grudgingly. Jerk. I got the impression he never got over not being a star any more. Professional he was, but still a jerk.
Iggy Pop, on the other hand, worked on the same show. I was never there when he was, but my wife says he was about the nicest and least stuck up guy you could imagine. He spend a lot of the off time smoking with the crew on a loading dock. He forgot and was smoking in the corridors of the school when someone asked him not to. He was embarrassed and apologetic about it.
This interview with Frank Langella makes him sound like a not nice and in fact somewhat neurotic guy. Pity if true, because his Frost Nixon performance is totally deserving of the Oscar nom he got.
There are copious stories online and in print about Steve Allen run-ins. The man evidently had a galactic ego and the introductions he wrote for himself (which those hosting or employing him were contractually obligated to read) credited him with the invention of televion, the initial harnessing of electricity, formulation of the periodic table and bringer of speech to humans. Jack Paar and Johnny Carson despised him and while he really was a pioneer in the talk show format he wasn’t quite the creator of the genre that he liked to claim. (Allen wrote thousands of songs during his career and mentioned this frequently, and was evidently infuriated by Paar’s quip “Steve Allen has written more than a thousand songs. One hundred bucks to the first person who can name three of them.”
Hardly surprising, but I have in-laws who worked (in a technical, not ministerial) capacity for Jimmy Swaggart in Baton Rouge and state that the only good thing about him is that he’s not his son. (Swaggart Jr. is evidently a world class A-hole.) I believe it was Robert Schuller who got into a fight with a flight attendant who claimed he was acting like a prima-donna, though of course I’m sure he had a side to the matter as well.
I’m almost disappointed to admit that those I know who met Jerry Falwell all said he was a very nice, outgoing, funny, and generous guy. Of course they were all straight, Baptist, and fans of his, which probably made a difference.
I think that the reason the riders stress healthy foods is because it’s too easy to just grab something from Taco Bell, or something else that’s open late and is not well known for healthy food. Let’s face it, after showtime, most places are closed, and those that ARE open will likely have a menu of grease served in a variety of interesting ways. By putting in these riders, the cast and crew will have at least some fresh fruits and veggies, and be able to eat something that’s not deepfried. Hell, I use this principle in my own household…I rarely buy family sized packs of cookies, or fatty snacks. Not because I don’t like them, but because I like them entirely too much. Instead, I make sure we have plenty of fresh fruits and veggies that we can snack on.
That’s about the nicest thing one can say about Columbus. I’m a descendant of his, and so I’ve studied him a bit, and apparently he was a first class asshole. He lied to just about everyone, made up facts to suit himself, abused his crew (admittedly, since they were who they were, he might have had to be a jerk to them to get anything useful done), and was just generally persistently wrong-headed.
The deal is, that I heard on NPR at some point, whatever hotel she stays in, her staff brings her personal toilet seat. The *reason *is that they don’t want people eBaying ‘toilet seat that the QEII sat on with her neckid butt!’
From what I’ve heard, that will always remain in the realm of the hypothetical…
I must be related to him too then!
And probably most of the other SDMBers 