DON'T YOU KNOW WHO I THINK I AM? At the Voice, Daniel King sticks up for Stanley Crouch, fired from JazzTimes right after it published Crouch's stinging rebuke to white jazz critics -- which rebuke, and Crouch's subsequent claims of persecution, are seconded by King, to wit: "And, we should ask, who are we, white editors and writers, who've appointed ourselves guardians of this year's jazz criticism?" Even Amiri Baraka, a frequent target of Crouch's abuse in the past, sticks up for Crouch, as do honkies Nat Hentoff and Gary Giddins.

My true interest in this is as mild as my interest in contemporary jazz. But Crouch's wounded tone is piquant. He isn't such a hot writer, as anyone who has perused his wan Daily News columns can see. But he is an excellent self-promoter. His is probably the best known (and certainly the most widely-circulated) black critic in America. He actually got the New Yorker to run a long piece on him and his impending first novel, Don't the Moon Look Lonesome (a piece of shit, as it turns out), and he is a frequent TV talking head (he was one of that nightmarish platoon of rotating commentators which 60 Minutes inflicted upon a shocked and disdainful public a few years back).

Given the scarcity of his talent, whence came his popularity? In the 1980s, writing for the Voice, Crouch, theretofore known as a jazz critic, came out in support of Reagan's layoff of striking air traffic controllers, which action broke their union and presaged the general collapse of organized labor in that decade. Crouch thereafter cultivated a harsh, right-wing, get-over-yourself image -- tough on race-baiters, tough on rappers, tough on anyone who would ask for anything, even respect, simply on the basis of what he happened to be. This distinguished him, certainly, and per the law of supply and demand, made him a marketable commodity.

Now Crouch, scourge of the air traffic controllers, says, "That a writer of my status and reputation would be dismissed in this way, with no discussion at all, constitutes some serious brand of injustice..."

Isn't that rich? The self-professed "hanging judge" wishes a stay of execution on the basis of his celebrity. To which I say: That's capitalism, comrade! A column in a magazine is not a Constitutional right or a set-aside program. The editors of JazzTimes had as much right to fire you as -- oh, as Reagan had to can the air traffic controllers.

Surely Crouch isn't going soft on us? No, only on himself.