Why Writers Have No Rights

Note that no literary Insiders-- Eggers, Franzen, Birkerts, the billionaire-run Harper's, or Bissell himself-- jumped into last week's fray. They have no need to when there exists a layer of loyal retainers, wannabes, and servants always ready and willing to act against their own interests by defending the literary establishment. (With an anonymous publisher urging them on.)

In the present System, writers and artists have no power, are mere hat-in-hand supplicants begging for the door of access to open. Literature in their world is like an exclusive Manhattan nightclub. At the entrance stand burly doormen deciding who is fit to gain entrance-- usually the already rich, famous, and known. The rest of the crowd remains beneath notice.

In the ULA, writers and artists are in charge. We've eliminated the hierarchies between publishing-decision-makers and writer. In our world, the writer is at the top of the food chain-- not at the very bottom of an enormous pyramid.

Yes, we're not fans of Tom Bissell (whose attitudes were hardened by working for the monopolistic conglomerates) because he's shown in his statements his contempt for D-I-Y philosophy and for the existence of underground writers. What, then, should be our attitude toward him?
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Worth laughing at is the mock outrage being shown by Mark Sarvas and others over the notion that the ULA had an axe to grind going into this matter. These are folks who've attacked the ULA and its writers time and again before I or anyone else in the ULA had ever heard of them. (As of course did Maud Newton.)

From where came their axes and vendettas? Where was their sense of fair play THEN??