Paul Krassner: Memoirs of resisting through humor

Paul Krassner is an author and journalist who also served as the editor and publisher of The Realist magazine....A prominent figure in the 1960s counterculture scene, he is a founding member of the Yippies and one of the members of Ken Kesey’s Merry Pranksters. “Zapped by the God of Absurdity: The Best of Paul Krassner” will be published in 2019 by Fantagraphics.

Paul Krassner, Variety - The current FBI has swung a pendulum from 50 years ago, when the FBI was an enemy of progressive activists. An agent’s poison-pen memo attempted to smear Tom Hayden with the worst possible label they could invoke with fliers: Yep, an FBI informer. Others distributed a caricature depicting Black Panther leader Huey Newton “as a homosexual,” and ran a fake “Pick the Fag” contest, referring to Dave McReynolds as “Chief White Fag of the lily-white War Resisters League” and “the usual Queer Cats — like Sweet Dave Dellinger and Fruity Rennie Davis.” I was described as “a raving, unconfined nut.” I thanked the FBI for that title of my autobiography.

.... Feminist Robin Morgan helped organize a protest of the Miss America Pageant in Atlantic City. A few hundred women were there on the boardwalk, holding a special ceremony. Icons of male oppression were being thrown into a trash barrel — cosmetics, a girdle, a copy of Playboy, high-heeled shoes, a pink brassiere — with the intent of setting the whole mix on fire. But there was an ordinance forbidding you to burn ANYTHING on the boardwalk, and the police were standing right there to enforce it. So there was no fire, but that didn’t matter. The image of a burning bra has become inextricably associated with women’s liberation. It’s a metaphorical truth.

.... Steve Post asked me to guest-host his radio night program in New York while he was away. At the time, a mass student strike was going on at Columbia University, so with a couple of talented friends, Marshall Efron and Bridget Potter, we pretended that we were Columbia students who had taken over WBAI. We used code names — Rudi Dutschke, Emma Goldman and Danny the Red. In nasal tones, I explained that we were all taking a course in alternative media, that our assignment was either to write a term paper or participate in an activity, and that we had decided to take over a radio station for credit. “The airwaves belong to the people,” we chanted. We had planned to carry on this hoax for 15 minutes, but it lasted four hours. KNBC in San Francisco and several other stations put us on the air, live. New York listeners called the police, but when they arrived we told them it was a put-on. Then, after they left, I went on the air again, snickering as I told the way we had fooled the cops. And they came again.