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The FINAL ISSUE of "THE REALIST" by Editor Paul Krassner (Issue #146 Spring 2001) has been published. PAUL KRASSNER can be reached at BOX 1230, VENICE, CA 90294.
PAUL KRASSNER is the editor of "THE REALIST" and a purveyor of Freethought, Criticism and Satire. An Interview with PAUL KRASSNER by CAT SIMRIL from "Adbusters Quarterly" Journal of the Mental Environment (Winter 1995 Vol. 3 No. 3) The Media Foundation, 1243 West 7th Avenue, Vancouver, B.C. V6H 1B7 Canada [email: adbuster@wimsey.com]:
We will be remembered in times to come, not for our leaders, but for those who pointed out they weren't wearing any clothes. Few in this century have been a greater threat to our emperors' dubious attire than Paul Krassner.
The youngest person to play Carnegie Hall at age 6 in 1939 became an investigative comedian with the encouragement of friends Lenny Bruce and Groucho Marx, and continues to amuse and amaze us to this day.
Psychedelic exploring with John Lilly's dolphins and the Chicago 7, bussing with Ken Kesey, tuning up with The Dead, John Lennon and Bob Dylan, unravelling Iran-Contra and the Internet with Peter Bergman, and through it all, bringing forth the counterculture since 1958 with his magazine *The Realist* (of which Joseph Heller said, "You practically write Catch 22 with every issue,") I figured Paul must be kind of tired by now.
When I asked Paul if he could go back and give his young self advice, he replied: "I would advise him not to be so defensive, to substitute empathy for defensiveness. I would tell him to always walk in others' shoes. As a subdivision of that, I would advise him that when he treated a woman only as a sexual object, he diminished himself as well as her. I would warn him against the misuse of precious time watching bad TV and rationalizing that he's a media critic. I would urge him to give careful thought to maintaining the line between his private friendship with public figures and what he might reveal about them publicly. I would be sure to tell young Paul Krassner what I know now about good nutrition. And most of all, I would advise him to dance his ass off.
CAT SIMRIL: What was your most successful prank?
PAUL KRASSNER: "The Parts Left Out of the Kennedy Book" published in *The Realist* in 1967. People across the country believed - if only for a moment - that an act of presidential necrophilia had taken place. It worked because Jackie Kennedy had created so much curiosity by censoring the book she authorized - William Manchester's, "The Death Of A President" - because what I wrote was a metaphorical truth about LBJ's personality presented in a literary context, and because the imagery was so shocking, it broke through the notion that the war in Vietnam was being conducted by sane men.
CS: What prank would you have done differently?
PK: A prank is by nature a personal experiment, so there's no right or wrong way.
CS: What's your perspective on the media these days?
PK: The separation between news and entertainment has become blurred beyond distinction. A particular actor got caught in that twilight zone between news and entertainment when he lost the role of John Lennon because his real name was Mark Chapman, coincidentally the name of Lennon's assassin. And no matter how sympathetic one might be to the plight of the American farmers, there was an inescapable absurdity to the scenario of four actresses - Sally Fields, Jane Fonda, Jessica Lange and Sissy Spacek - testifying before a Congressional committee about farm problems.
CS: So is it just the wrong image, or all televised images?
PK: All I know is that a ten-year-old kid with an IQ of 200 just graduated from college, and now wants to be a TV game show host. This poor kid has been brainwashed by the culture, and now he wants to perpetuate the notion that facts are important even though they relate to nothing except the accumulation of facts, and their only context is to soften up viewers for commercials that exploit their fears - from the fear of having smelly armpits to the fear of not being able to see your reflection in the dinner plate. This kid may be pretty smart, but he's too dumb to understand that what he'll actually be doing with his one and only life is contributing to a propaganda machine.
CS: Finally, as an *Adbusters* reader and subscriber, what would you like to say to the readership of the magazine?
PK: Metaphors be with you!
In 1996, his latest book, "The Winner of the Slow Bicycle Race: The Satirical Writings of Paul Krassner", was published by Seven Stories Press with a dedication to Jerry Garcia and an introduction by Kurt Vonnegut. Paul Krassner's comedy CD, "We Have Ways of Making You Laugh", was released by Mercury Records in 1996. On February 7, 1997 Krassner recorded his show at The Ash Grove on the Santa Monica Pier and the CD has been released as "Brain Damage Control".
Excerpt by Paul Krassner from THE REALIST that is included in the ADBUSTERS QUARTERLY [Winter 1995 Vol. 3 No. 3] interview of Paul Krassner by Cat Simril:
"Blood On The Laugh Tracks"
Since laughter is music to me, canned laughter is a perversion of my music. It consists of dead people who were taped laughing at I Love Lucy who are now laughing posthumously at The Cosby Show. Is that what the civil rights struggle was all about?
Canned laughter is the lowest form of fascism. It is propaganda that falsely - almost subliminally - implies something is funny when it isn't. Real laughter is a spontaneous process that represents the sense of humour of a unique individual. Canned laughter is the epitome of televised hypnotic suggestion. It is TV's ultimate insult to the audience.
A few years ago, I did a study of the alleged humour in situation comedies. A byproduct of my research was a certain awareness that, after a while, canned laughter had begun to re-program my nervous system. Now, when something on TV struck me as funny, I noticed myself hesitating for just a split second - waiting for permission from the laugh track. I had lost my instinctive sense of critical judgment.
Dedication to his book "The Winner Of The Slow Bicycle Race" by Paul Krassner:
"For Jerry Garcia, who will be missed like a middle finger."
From the Foreward by Kurt Vonnegut [February 14, 1996] to "The Winner Of The Slow Bicycle Race" by Paul Krassner:
"I told Krassner one time that his writings made me hopeful. He found this an odd compliment to offer a satirist. I explained that he made supposedly serious matters seem ridiculous, and that this inspired many of his readers to decide for themselves what was ridiculous and what was not. Knowing that there were people doing that, better late than never, made me optimistic."
From the inside cover notes to "The Winner Of The Slow Bicycle Race" the 1996 collection of Satirical Writings by Paul Krassner:
After ABC newscaster Harry Reasoner wrote in his memoirs that "Krassner not only attacked establishment values, he attacked decency in general," Paul Krassner named his one-person show "Attacking Decency in General," receiving awards for creation and performance from the "L.A. Weekly" and "Drama-Logue". And Krassner is the only person in the world ever to win awards from both "Playboy" (for satire) and the Feminist Party Media Workshop (for journalism).
"The Winner Of The Slow Bicycle Race" collects all Krassner's most recent stories, as well as his most famous satirical pieces from past years. The book is Swiftian in intention and contemporary in subject matter. It reveals Krassner to have the heart of a muckraker and the spirituality of a seeker after truth.
But get ready! On the surface, Krassner's writings seamlessly blend factual reporting and suggestive misstatement. "The truth," says Krassner, "is Silly Putty;" and "cultural anarchy IS freedom of speech."
Kneading fantasy into reality, Krassner ferrets out the higher truths that spotlight the absurdity all around. In Krassner's world, Lyndon Johnson chuckles over the corpse of JFK, a psychiatrist hypnotically regresses a woman who shot her television set, and Nancy Reagan's "Just say no to drugs" becomes "If anybody tries to sell you an ounce of marijuana for $500, that's way to expensive, so just say no."
From the inside cover notes to the 1993 book by Paul Krassner "Confessions of a Raving, Unconfined Nut: Misadventures in the Counter-Culture" published by Simon and Schuster:
This is no ordinary memoir. Paul Krassner started out as a child-prodigy violinist, the youngest concert artist ever to perform at Carnegie Hall, but he lost his *real* virginity - literally and figuratively - at "Mad" magazine. However, "Mad's" humor was aimed at teenagers; America had no satirical magazine for adults, so in 1958 Krassner launched "The Realist". Irreverence was his only sacred cow.
When "People" magazine called him "father of the underground press," he immediately demanded a paternity test. Nevertheless, "The Realist" was indeed a forerunner of the alternative media, serving as both an influence on and a chronicler of the burgeoning counter-culture. His life story is enhanced by encounters with such folk heroes as Norman Mailer, Dick Gregory, Bob Dylan, John Lennon, and Jerry Garcia.
Krassner never identified anything as either reportage or satire in "The Realist", and it was often hard to tell the difference. His most infamous such piece, "The Parts Left Out of the Kennedy Book," has become a modern classic, and its complete text is included in these pages, along with the story behind his "F**k Communism" poster and the Disneyland Memorial Orgy.
All his readers see Krassner through their own subjective filters. Joseph Heller told him, "You practically write *Catch 22* with every issue of "The Realist." And Kurt Vonnegut said, "You make me hopeful." But the FBI sent a poison-pen letter to "Life" magazine: "To classify Krassner as a 'social rebel' is far too cute. He's a nut, a raving, unconfined nut." And Harry Reasoner wrote that "Krassner not only attacked establishment values, he attacked decency in general."
Krassner's style of personal journalism constantly blurred the line between observer and participant. He interviewed an abortionist, then became an illegal abortion referral service. He covered the antiwar movement, then founded the Yippies with Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin. He published material on the psychedelic revolution, then took LSD with Timothy Leary and Groucho Marx.
He edited Lenny Bruce's autobiography *How to Talk Dirty and Influence People*, then, with Lenny's encouragement, became a stand-up comedian himself. Five years after Lenny's death, Groucho Marx stated, "I predict that in time Paul Krassner will wind up as the only live Lenny Bruce."
"Krassner loves ironies," says Ken Kesey, author of *One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest*, "especially stinging ironies that nettle public figures. He would rather savor a piquant irony about a public figure than eat a bowl of fresh strawberries and ice cream." Krassner's own favorite irony is that he received an award from the Feminist Party, and was later hired as publisher of "Hustler."
Krassner published writers and activists in "The Realist" whom no one else would touch, from prostitute organizer Margo St. James to assassination researcher Mae Brussell, who revealed the insidious machinations behind the Watergate break-in while the mainstream media were still referring to it as a "third-rate burglary." He also investigated the Charles Manson massacre, and found himself freaking out with paranoia from conspiracy overload.
These uncensored confessions of a controversial satirist will make you laugh out loud, shock you out of your jeans, and alter your perceptions permanently.
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