Old Folks was like a man who wrote an
exposé of plantation life--a cultural ecology of plantation life, as he said--and
then had to send it to the owner of the plantation to get it published, because the
plantation owner, Captain Charley, wanted to control what the workers thought and
felt about their conditions of employment. He didn't want them to take up the wrong
agenda.
Captain Charley was the unholy alliance of book publishers, book
reviewers in the media of mass communication, grants specialists at arts agencies
and foundations, and university writing instructors and literary critics. Together,
Old Folks called them the War Heads.
Short for "the War Heads in publishing."
Like calling them dem.
The Buzzard Cult knew what Old Folks meant when he
said dem.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out
to get you.
(1) Old Folks was paranoid. (2) They were still out to get
him. Because they didn't like what he had to say. About dem.