Confessions of a Raving, Unconfined Nut

by Paul Krassner

  The Occupiers appear to be a leaderless community—most likely, you can’t name a single one; not yet, anyway—whereas Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, and I served as spokespeople for the Yippies. We had media contacts and knew how to speak in sound bytes. If we gave good quotes, they gave free publicity for upcoming demonstrations. It was mutual manipulation.

  The Yippies were inspired by a Buddhist monk in Vietnam who set himself on fire in order to call attention to the war. The photo of that incident traveled around the globe, and I wore a lapel button which featured that flaming image. Similarly, in 2010, a street vendor in Tunisia refused to pay a police bribe, then immolated himself, which inspired a revolution there, and next in Egypt, then spreading into Arab Spring, which ultimately inspired American Autumn in 2011.

  Inspired by the Yippies attempt to levitate the Pentagon, Aron Kay wanted to get fellow Occupiers to levitate Wall Street, to no avail. Likewise, inspired by the Yippies nomination of an actual pig for president, Michael Dare tried unsuccessfully to persuade fellow protesters at Occupy Seattle to carry out his notion that “if corporations are people, let’s run one for president.” I offered myself as Secretary of Greed.

  The evolution of technology has changed the way protests are organized and carried out. The Yippies had to use messy mimeograph machines to print out flyers that had to be stuffed into envelopes, addressed, stamped, and mailed. The Internet generally—and social media such as Facebook and Twitter—have enabled Occupiers to inexpensively reach countless people immediately.

  When the Yippies were being tear-gassed, beaten sadistically and indiscriminately, we chanted, “The whole world is watching!” But now, when a bloodbath was expected to happen if the New York police forced the Occupiers out of the park—and then that didn’t happen—Michael Moore asked a cop, “Why don’t you think the eviction happened?” The reply: “Because the mayor’s afraid of YouTube.”

  One month later, Mayor Bloomberg apparently lost that fear; by his order, the eviction happened at 1 am The next afternoon, a protester, before being allowed back in, was overheard remarking, “The cops have occupied Zuccotti Park. We’re just trying to figure out what their demands are.”

  What occurred in Chicago in 1968 was officially labeled “a police riot” by a government-sponsored investigation. Now, as the Occupy model has spread around the country, police brutality has increased, and it’s not surprising that there have been accusations of provocateurs sabotaging the nonviolent principle, including an assistant editor at a conservative magazine who infiltrated a group of protesters in Washington, D.C., later claiming that his purpose was “to mock and undermine them in the pages of the American Spectator,” and that he helped incite a riot at the National Air and Space Museum, getting pepper-sprayed in the process.

  The Yippies were essentially countercultural, and, although the Occupiers are essentially mainstream, right-wing media pundits have been demonizing them like mad.

  Bill O’Reilly called the Occupiers “drug-trafficking crackheads” and “violent America-hating anarchists.” Sean Hannity said they “sound like skinhead Nazi psychos.” Ann Coulter referred to them as mobs of “teenage runaways” and “tattooed, body–pierced, sunken-chested nineteen-year-olds getting in fights with the police for fun.” Glenn Beck warned that they “will come for you and drag you into the streets and kill you.” Andrew Breitbart declared that Occupy Wall Street is “a group of public masturbating violent freaks.” Rush Limbaugh labeled them “dumbed down” and “propagandized” and asked a rhetorical question reeking with layers of irony: “Whatever happened to the ’60s—Question Authority!” At this point, Limbaugh is sort of like a castrated canine that is still busy humping the living-room sofa by force of habit.

  I’ll conclude here with a little gift for the infamous 1 percent in the form of what could eventually become a riddle for reactionaries: “What do corporations and fetuses have in common?”

  And the answer is: “They’re both persons.”

  In December 2010, the Oakland branch of PEN, the international writers’ organization, honored me with their Lifetime Achievement Award. Here are some excerpts from my acceptance speech:I really appreciate that introduction. That’s the best intro I’ve gotten since, at the Just for Laughs Comedy Festival in Montreal, where there was a bunch of comedians who were gonna do about six minutes each, and so the emcee came into the Green Room and just asked each one how they wanted to be introduced. So I said, “Well, just say I’m a social satirist.” About fifteen minutes later, it was my turn to come on, and there was the emcee, looking at the scratchy notes that he had written, and he said, “Our next comedian is Paul Krassner, a sociopath.” It’s on my resumé now.

  I appreciate the irony here—I’ve had a lifetime of being an iconoclast, and now this Lifetime Achievement Award is making me an icon. And so I have to search around for my oclast and see what happened to it. I appreciate this plaque—probably made in China [it was]. I told my dentist I was getting a plaque, and he said, “Well, I’ll remove it.” Anyway, you know, to get an award like this does not imply that I did it alone.

  There are so many to thank who have contributed and supported me all of these decades, and I just want to thank a few of them quickly in chronological order. But first and foremost, in terms of my spiritual quest, I would like to thank—Satan!—just kidding. It was a real competition getting this award. I beat out Justin Bieber, I beat out Levi Johnston, and Johnny Knoxville, not to mention Christine O’Donnell.

  I want to thank my parents, who really were very embarrassed by my work, if not ashamed, and yet they were supportive of me and they nurtured my irreverence. My brother George and my sister Marge, who were also very supportive. My former wife, Jeanne Johnson, who taught me that responsibility is fun. Our daughter, Holly, who once said to me, “Dad, don’t be offended, but I don’t want to be a writer when I grow up, because it seems like a very insecure profession.” My current wife, Nancy Cain, who for twenty-two and two-third years has been my mate and my muse. Lyle Stuart, editor of The Independent, a forerunner of the alternative press, where I served my apprenticeship in journalism. And Lenny Bruce, my inadvertent mentor in satire . . .

  So, I just want to conclude with—I hardly remember anything from my entire higher education—the only thing I remember from college was in an anthropology course, and it was a definition of happiness—“having as little separation as possible between your work and your play”—and I’ve been very fortunate, being able to do that, and to get an award for it is really the icing on the cake, because the process was the goal. And also I know that, in my lifetime I’ve met so many people who deserve a lifetime achievement award, except that they didn’t do it publicly. I do want to say how happy this award makes me, and the only thing that makes me happier is that it’s not posthumous. Thank you.

  So many people who were important in different aspects of my life have died in addition to those already mourned in this book.

  Family: My mother, Ida Krassner. And my first wife, Jeanne Johnson.

  Friends: Lyle Stuart. Bill Gaines. Lou Swift. Scott Kelman. Bill Graham. Alan Watts. Paul Jacobs. Phil Ochs. Dave Dellinger. Anita Hoffman. Jerry Rubin. Stew Albert. Timothy Leary. John Lilly. Robert Anton Wilson. Norman Mailer. Kurt Vonnegut. Terry Southern. Gus Reichbach. Lotus Weinstock. Tony Russo. John Lennon. Jerry Garcia. Cass Elliot. Jean Shepherd. Tuli Kupferberg. John Francis Putnam. Marv Davidov. Bill Kunstler. Albert Ellis. Bob Abel. Peter McWilliams. Mae Brussell. Jack Herer. Peter Bergman. Ralph Gleason. Herb Caen. Janet Bode. Dick Schaap. Jerome Washington. Ken Kelley. Del Close. Owsley Stanley. Steve Ben Israel.

  And one more for the road . . .

  George Carlin died in June 2008. He was a generous friend. When I performed in Los Angeles, he sent a limousine to pick me up at the airport, and I stayed at his home. And such a sweet man. When I opened for him at the Warner-Grand Theater in San Pedro, we were hanging around in his dressing room, where he was nibbling from a vegetable plate. I watc
hed as he continued to be genuinely gracious with every fan who stopped by. If they wanted his autograph, he would gladly sign his name. If they wanted to be photographed with him, he would assume the pose. If they wanted to have a little chat, he indulged them with congeniality.

  I said, “You really show respect for everybody.”

  “Well,” he responded, “that’s just the way I would want to be treated.”

  As a performer, Carlin was uncompromising, knowing that his audience trusted him not to be afraid of offending them. In fact, he was excited by that possibility. The day before one of his live HBO specials, he called and told me to be sure to watch it, because he would devote the first ten minutes of his performance to the subject of abortion.

  Carlin had long been vocal in support of the right to smoke and ingest various drugs, and he posed this rhetorical question: “Why are there no recreational drugs in suppository form?” I was pleased to inform him that teenage girls have been experimenting with tampons soaked in vodka, inserting them vaginally or rectally as a way of getting intoxicated without their parents detecting booze on their breath.

  No matter what else Richard Nixon accomplished in his lifetime, his obituaries always mentioned him as the first American president to resign, and no matter what else George Carlin accomplished in his lifetime, his obits always connected him with the Supreme Court ruling on “The Seven Words You Can’t Say on Television.”

  When asked in the Green Room at the Warner-Grand Theater by producer Dan Pasley why he didn’t include the word “nigger” in that list, Carlin replied, “There’s nothing funny about it—that really is a dirty word—but repressed words about sexual functions and bodily parts were truly funny. I had only been thinking about the ‘dirty’ words in terms of sex and bodily functions, and how uptight these religious freaks have made us. That’s fun, that’s some funny shit.”

  At a private memorial for family and friends, Carlin’s daughter, Kelly, read from his burial instructions, written on May 1, 1990:Upon my death, I wish to be cremated. The disposition of my ashes (dispersal at sea, on land or in the air) shall be determined by my surviving family (wife and daughter) in accordance with their knowledge of my prejudices and philosophies regarding geography and spirituality. Under no circumstances are my ashes to be retained by anyone or buried in a particular location. The eventual dispersal can be delayed for any reasonable length of time required to reach a decision, but not to exceed one month following my death.

  I wish no public service of any kind. I wish no religious service of any kind. I prefer a private gathering at my home, attended by friends and family members who shall be determined by my surviving family (wife and daughter). It should be extremely informal, they should play rhythm and blues music, and they should laugh a lot. Vague references to spirituality (secular) will be permitted.

  Kelly added, “There will be no mention of God allowed” and “no one will be allowed to say that ‘George is now smiling down at us from Heaven above.’”

  Carlin once told an audience of children how to be a class clown as a way of attracting attention. “I didn’t start out with fake heart attacks in the aisle,” he explained. Ah, if only that’s what he was doing this time.

  But a reporter did once ask him how he wanted to die.

  “I’d like to explode spontaneously in someone’s living room,” he replied. “That, to me, is the way to go out.”

  And, through his CDs, DVDs, books, and online, George Carlin does indeed continue to explode spontaneously in living rooms across the country and around the world.

  Orson Bean is my oldest living friend. He’s a Christian libertarian conservative, and we’ve had an ongoing email dialogue about religion, but he’s still a Christian and I’m still an atheist. Not a militant atheist, as I used to be, though. I changed when I realized that Martin Luther King was a Christian, but I was inspired by his actions, and George Lincoln Rockwell, head of the American Nazi Party, was an agnostic, but I abhorred what he stood for. It no longer mattered to me what anybody’s religious belief was, only how they treated others. And Orson Bean is a true mensch.

  I decided to email him: “If you can arrange for me to interview Andrew Breitbart”—his son-in-law—“I’ll believe in God.”

  Orson must’ve forwarded my email to Breitbart, because he sent me an email saying, “Apparently there is a God,” with his own phone number. I called, we spoke, and he agreed to do an interview. My only ground rule would be that neither of us would interrupt the other.

  I contacted Steve Randall, my editor at Playboy, and I got the assignment. I immediately sent an email to Orson with the good news. The subject line was “Praise the fucking Lord.”

  My discussion with Breitbart—maybe his last interview—was published in the December 2011 issue of Playboy. Here’s how it began.Krassner: I was surprised to learn that you consider my work to be one of your inspirations. But you also claim that the mainstream media had a double standard and didn’t criticize me the way they do with you and the conservative movement that you represent. It’s not true, though. I’ve been excoriated in papers from the Los Angeles Times to the Chicago Tribune to The Washington Post. My favorite headline was, “Give This Man a Saliva Test.” And you’ve also praised Abbie Hoffman and the Yippies, and Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters, as heavy influences. They were both close friends of mine and remain as my touchstones, and yet you’re at the other end of the social and political spectrum. So what I want to know is, how do they fit into the context of your own personal mission?

  Breitbart: Well, at the time that you were doing what you were doing and trailblazing and causing mischief and mirth and affecting the type of political and social change that you were attempting to do, there’s no doubt that you were being challenged by others at the time. What I’m talking about is the current order of the media in the twenty-first century and how history now looks upon the Merry Pranksters and the Abbie Hoffmans and the Ken Keseys and Hunter Thompson with great reverence, and it’s as if they’ve been given their own wing of the journalism school. And so I don’t want to simplify history.

  I understand at the time that you went through hell, and the same could be said of Matt Drudge. From 1995 until about 2002, the same forces were trying to claim that Matt Drudge had no right to be doing what he was doing, which now everybody accepts as commonplace and accepted practice, and The Huffington Post was just purchased for $350 million by AOL for replicating what Matt Drudge does on the left-of-center bent. So the trailblazers, while they’re trailblazing, can beget the arrows and slings hurled at them, and I’m not trying to diminish the peril that you went through. I’m stating that right now, when I’m reporting truths on Wednesday and causing mirth on Thursday, the press has a problem dealing with that. And I’m saying, no, you’re not going to define me; I’m going to define what it is that I do, and you’re going to have to deal with it. And I gained my inspiration from the knowledge that you guys went through the same process, and I’m using you guys as a model.

  I’m in pretty good health, but over the decades, stemming from that old police beating, my gait has gradually gotten gimpier and gimpier. My hip became so out of kilter that my right foot turned inward when I walked, and my left foot was continuously tripping on my right foot. More and more often, I found myself falling all over the place. Dozens of times. Several fractured ribs.

  Finally, when I fell at a book festival in Australia, I began accidentally knocking down other people like dominoes, and I realized that I would definitely need to start walking with a cane. Since then, at any airport, I have to put my cane on the conveyor belt, along with my carry-on bag and my shoes. And then the security person hands me a different cane—a wooden one, painted orange—to help me walk through the metal detector without falling.

  One time in a restaurant, I tripped on my own cane and fell flat on my face—bruising myself badly, yet grateful that I hadn’t broken any teeth. That’s my nature—to perceive a blessing in disguise as soon
as I stop bleeding. However, this time I was left with a dark, square-shaped scab between my nose and my lips. It looked like a Hitler mustache, and I became somewhat self-conscious about it.

  I really am a walking time bomb. I cannot afford to fall again. I must be careful when I walk. I just have to be fully conscious of every single step. Left. Right. Left. Right. Left. Right. Any fall could injure me. It might even be fatal. So I’ve surrendered to a process of survival that’s truly an ongoing lesson in mindfulness. I’m learning that when you’re mindful in one aspect of your life, you’ll strengthen mindfulness in other aspects.

  I am, after all, a Zen Bastard, and I certainly have no desire to trip while hobbling along my peculiar path.

  For several years, I’ve been writing a column for AVN (Adult Video News), a trade journal for the porn industry. In March 2011, I received an email from the editor:

  “We are just on the verge of completely revamping the magazine, and it is my unhappy duty to tell you that we are going to have to discontinue your ‘One Hand Jerking’ column. With the focus of the magazine shifting to a more business/retail-oriented editorial content, we’re going to have to use the space differently. I have been procrastinating making the cut because your column was one of the bright spots in my job, so I was really loath to let it go.”

  I wasn’t too surprised. I think there’s so much free porn on the Internet that it’s become a substantial competitor of pay-for-porn. Exactly one week later, I got an email from the editor of High Times, for which I’ve been writing a column titled “Brain Damage Control” for a few decades.

  “There’s no easy way to put this,” I was informed, “but [another writer] will be taking over your column slot in the magazine. I hate to be the one to tell you this. I have great admiration for you and your writing.”