Paul Krassner, Yippie co-founder, iconoclastic journalist, counterculture leader, stand-up comic, pal of Abbie Hoffman and Lenny Bruce, social satirist, publisher of The Realist and, some might say, pornographer, read from his latest book at a Napa wine shop recently. A wine shop? Was Krassner → he says some confuse him with Jefferson Airplane/Starship guitarist Paul Kantner → finally selling out? Or has American reality finally and completely morphed into a full-goose lampoon of itself?
No bad acid trip, this: Krassner was hawking his latest work, a tome published by City Lights Books, with the somewhat academic title of: Who’s to Say What’s Obscene? Politics, Culture, and Comedy in America Today. He was reading it at his daughter’s and son-in-law’s wine shop, Back Room Wines, at the corner of First and Main Streets in Napa, California.
The 77 year-old Krassner is a treasure trove of stories from the steaming cauldron of social change that was the 1960’s, tales of people and events surrounding the counterculture movement and the Vietnam War, and he shares them in his book. He founded the Yippies along with Abbie Hoffman, dropped LSD with Tim Leary, Ram Dass and Ken Kesey, and edited Lenny Bruce's autobiography, How to Talk Dirty and Influence People. True to the rebellious spirit of that era, he began the reading by disagreeing with a sentence from his own book.
Cartoon Wars
"Irreverence is my only sacred cow," Krassner read, then quickly modified the statement, saying not all irreverence deserved respect. Unlike the 60s, Krassner said, today there is a lot of pointless irreverence. In those days, irreverence was rebellion, a weapon against the forces of oppression and repression. He is not a fan, Krassner said, of today’s pointless irreverence.
And Krassner’s book seems just as timely today as it would have been 40 years ago. Many things have not changed. For example, many would say the Middle East provides just as many revolting absurdities as it did then. Krassner addresses the Muhammad cartoon controversy with his usual bluntness.
"As a secular humanist I find it simultaneously tragic and absurd to witness so much unspeakable anguish caused by religious wars in the Middle East being fought over deities in whose existence I disbelieve." Krassner takes everyone to task, Muslims and editors, for the escalation of these cartoon wars, describing a retaliating Muslim cartoon showing Anne Frank in bed with Hitler.
He describes the loopy disconnects caused by our rapidly accelerating technological change, as in the story of his niece who, upon seeing a manual typewriter, was puzzled. "What’s that for?" she asked. When Krassner explained, she asked, "Where do you plug it in?" "You don’t have to plug it in," her uncle told her, "you just push the keys." "That’s awesome," the youngster replied.
Hippies Were Right
In his book,. Krassner points out that the hippies of the 60s were pioneers whose thinking was right on about lots of things. The green movement, organics and slow food are all outgrowths of the hippie movement. He quotes San Francisco Chronicle columnist, Mark Morford:
"Alternative health? Hippies. Green cotton? Hippies. Reclaimed wood? Recycling? Humane treatment of animals? Medical pot? Alternative energy? Natural childbirth? Non-GMA seeds? It came from the granola types (who, of course, absorbed much of it from ancient cultures), from the alternative worldviews, from the underground and the sidelines and from far off the goddamn grid, and it’s about time the media, the politicians, the culture as a whole sent out a big, wet, hemp covered apology."
Not all Krassner’s stories and insights are from the past. While he modestly demurs donning the mantle of a prophet, he has an infallible instinct for predicting future absurdities. When the topic of a border fence first came up, for example, Krassner claims he immediately made a joke about illegal immigrants being hired to work on the fence to keep themselves out. Sure enough, one of the fence’s contractors was indeed fined for employing illegal immigrants. "It’s a case of reality outrunning satire," Krassner said, a condition he says that is happening more and more in this ever accelerating society.
For nearly two hours, Krassner read and recounted stories about Abbie Hoffman – who really did commit suicide Krassner said – Norman Mailer, Alan Ginsberg, Lenny Bruce (who was his comedy mentor) and others. Krassner, it seems, was everywhere and into everything. He described succumbing to the ubiquitous disease of the 60s, paranoia, imagining he was telepathically communicating with Hoffman, who was in hiding many miles away, by clicking a ball point pen while riding on a bus seated behind a CIA agent.
A series of almost stream of consciousness anecdotes, Krassner's book is easy, fun reading if you have memories going back more than 40 years, and even if you don't. But he's even more entertaining in person.
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