Elie Mystal, attorney and author of the New York Times bestseller "Allow Me to Retort: A Black Guy's Guide to the Constitution," wanted actor Samuel L. Jackson to record the audio version of his book. Mystal's title, after all, is drawn from one of Jackson's famous lines in "Pulp Fiction." But if you've seen Mystal on cable news, you know he doesn't need Jackson to provide passion and emphatic delivery. Mystal gives you all that and more, as you will see first-hand in our recent "Salon Talks" conversation.
Mystal takes, shall we say, the controversial position that the U.S. Constitution is not only "not good," but that it's "actually trash." He notes that our founding document was drafted by men who owned slaves and enshrined that evil institution with the infamous Fugitive Slave Clause and the "three-fifths compromise." But Mystal's bigger point is that our Constitution is given too much deference: "We act like this thing was kind of etched in stone by the finger of God, when actually it was hotly contested and debated, scrawled out over a couple of weeks in the summer in Philadelphia in 1787, with a bunch of rich, white politicians making deals with each other."
