red G-string and displaying his naked ass. Satirist Harry Shearer observed that “The nightmare in Tucson is the inevitable result of a society where a mentally confused young man can purchase a red G-string anywhere at any time, and pose with it as he sees fit. Can't we all agree now to lower the temperature on underwear?” Speaking of lowering the temperature, in the Pittsburgh Post- Gazette, editorial cartoonist Rob Rogers depicted the U.S. Civil Discourse Gun Shop where a customer is asking the clerk: “Do you have anything versatile enough to go from a campaign breakfast to a protest march to a Town Hall meeting?” And in the Orlando Sentinal Dana Summers depicted another gun store featuring semi-automatic 31-clip weapons, where the clerk is explaining to a customer: “Say you have thirty-one burglars break into your house.” On the Monday following the tragic weekend, Jon Stewart was unable to find anything funny about it. Nor was Stephen Colbert, although he did present a montage of news clips with various explanations of Loughner’ s behavior, and the final one, from Fox News— “He is also being described as a left-wing political pothead” —managed to evoke laughter from the audience. And Rush Limbaugh called him a “marijuana junkie.” HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015332

In October 2008, Loughner told an old friend, Bryce Tierney, that he wasn’ t going to smoke marijuana any more. Tierney never saw him smoke pot again, and was surprised at media reports that Loughner was rejected by the Army in 2009 for failing a drug test: “He was clean...| saw him after that continuously. He would not do it...After he quit, he was just off the wall." But Loughner did not fail a drug test that day at the processing station. Rather, he admitted on an application form that he had smoked marijuana “hundreds of times.” He didn’ t know that the military has an official maximum of times you can admit to smoking pot. A journalist | know acknowledges that he tried to join the Air Force at the San Diego recruitment office, but, “When the subject of drugs came up, | figured, okay, | have long hair, | look maybe homeless, they're going to know I'm lying if | say I've always been straight. I'll say I've smoked pot seven or eight times--something ridiculously, embarrassingly low. Whatever it was, it was too high. The recruiter said. ‘You can't have smoked more than five times. Go away, kid. Maybe the Marines will take you.’ Two weeks later | was at the Sacramento recruitment office and | had the ‘magic number.’ | joined the Air Force. One of the stupider things I've done.” Indeed, Chris Hedges wrote on 7ruthDig. “Power does not rest with HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015333

the electorate. It does not reside with either of the two major political parties. It is not represented by the press. It is not arbitrated by a judiciary that protects us from predators. Power rests with corporations. And corporations gain very lucrative profits from war, even wars we have no chance of winning. All polite appeals to the formal systems of power will not end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. We must physically obstruct the war machine or accept a role as its accomplice.” When it comes to bloodbaths, the only difference between such invisible corporations and Jared Loughner is that he did it face-to-face. Obviously, Loughner is crazy, but not legally insane, because he knew right from wrong, as indicated by his expectation of life in prison or execution for his unspeakable crime. True, John Hinckley was crazy when he tried to assassinate Ronald Reagan—his motivation was to impress actress Jodie Foster so she would go out bowling with him--yet he was sentenced to serve //s time in a mental hospital, including occasional outings with his parents, which resulted in public outrage and a weakening of the insanity defense. Ironically, Hinckley came out for gun control, and Reagan came out against it. HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015334

The Yippies and the Occupiers As a co-founder of the Yippies (Youth International Party)—known for demonstrating against the Vietnam War at the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago--| find myself comparing and contrasting the Yippies and the Occupy Wall Street protesters. We had to perform stunts to get media coverage of our cause, so a group of us went to the New York Stock Exchange, upstairs to the balcony, and threw $200 worth of singles onto the floor below, watching the gang of manic brokers suddenly morph from yelling "Pork Bellies" into playing "Diving for Dollars." Then we held a press conference outside, explaining the connection between the capitalist system and the war. Now, a particular placard, “Wall Street Is War Street,” gives me a sense of continuity. Other anonymous Occupier spokespersons carried posters proclaiming: “God Forbid We Have Sex & Smoke Pot. They Want Us to Grab Guns & Go to War!" = “I am an immigrant. | came here to take your job. But you don’ t have one.” “$96,000 for a BA in Hispanic transgender gay & lesbian studies and | can’ t find work!” And a woman in a wheelchair: “Stand Up For Your Rights!” HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015335

By the sheer power of numbers without the necessity of stunts, the Occupiers have broadened public awareness about the economic injustice perpetuated by corporations without compassion conspiring with government corruption that has resulted in immeasurable suffering. The Yippies were a myth that became a reality. The Occupiers are a reality that became a myth. The spirit of nonviolent revolution is what connects them. NPR waited until eleven days of Occupy Wall Street had passed before reporting its existence. The executive news editor explained that the Occupiers “did not involve large numbers of people” (actually, there were already several hundred), no “prominent people” showed up (thus ignoring Michael Moore and Susan Sarandon), the lack of “a great disruption” (the police pepper-spraying protesters trapped in a cage of orange netting finally met that need), “or an especially clear objective” (oh, right, like all those flip-floppy pandering politicians whose clear objective is to get elected). 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 | served as spokespeople for the Yippies. We had media contacts and knew how to speak in sound bytes. If we gave good quote, HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015336

they gave free publicity for upcoming demonstrations. It was mutual manipulation. Sample: A reporter asked me about the 1968 counter-convention we were planning, “Will you be staying in tents?” | replied, “Some of us will be intense. Others will be frivolous.” During an interview with Abbie and me for the CBS Evening News, taped at his apartment, Abbie paraphrased Che Guevara and said, “I'm prepared to win or die.” However, that never got on the air. When the reporter asked me, “What do the Yippies actually plan to do in Chicago?” | smiled at her and said, “You think I'm gonna tell you?’ That portion of my answer was used to end Walter Cronkite’s segment on the Yippies, but my follow-up sentence-- “The first thing we're gonna do is put truth serum in the reporters’ drinks” --was omitted. They had beaten me at my own game. The Yippies were inspired by the 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 | 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 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015337

revolution there, and next in Egypt, spreading into Arab Spring, which ultimately inspired American Autumn in 2011. Inspired by the Yippies attempt to levitate the Pentagon, pie- thrower Aron Kay wanted to get fellow Occupiers to levitate Wall Street. No interest. Likewise, inspired by the Yippies nomination of an actual pig named Pigasus 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.” | 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, and 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 HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015338

happen—Michael Moore asked acop, “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 a.m. 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.") Not only what occurred in Chicago in 1968 was officially labeled “a police riot” by a government-sponsored investigation, but also an undercover police provocateur—who was disguised as a local biker and acted as Jerry Rubin’ s bodyguard—would ultimately state that he participated in pulling down the American flag in Grant Park, destroying it, then running up the black flag of the Viet Cong in its place. “| joined in the chants and taunts against the police,” he said, “and provoked them to hitting me with their clubs. They didn’ t know who | was, but they did know that | had called them names and struck them with one or more weapons.” 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, not to HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015339

mention 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. Moreover, a document from the Houston FBI revealed their plan “to engage in sniper attacks” and “kill the leadership” of the Occupy activists “if deemed necessary.” The Yippies were essentially countercultural, an amalgam of radicalized stoned hippies and straight political activists. And, although the Occupiers are essentially mainstream, their demonization by right-wing media pundits has been providing a repeat performance of neutralizing a progressive cause. 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 19- 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.” HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015340

Andrew Breitbart declared that Occupy Wall Street is “a group of public masturbating violent freaks.” And 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 like a castrated canine that is still busy humping the living-room sofa by force of habit. HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015341

PORN AGAIN HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015342

Remembering Pubic Hair Okay, call me old-fashioned, but | still like pubic hair. Internet porn sites now present several choices--completely shaved, vertical landing strips that look like exclamation points, heart shaped, the Charlie Chaplin with just a little patch above the clitoris, and a tiny triangle that serves as an arrow pointing to the clit--yet, for a full bush, one would have to search the Web for “hairy” sites that are considered as “specialty,” “kinky” or “fetish.” Retired porn stars have commented on this phenomenon. Gina Rome, retired after six years, shaved every day. “It was part of getting ready for work.” When she switched from acting to film editing, she stopped shaving and let her pubic hair grow out. “Shaving was work. | don’ t have to do it any more, so | don’ t.” And Kelly Nichols says, “I was a Penthouse model in the early 1980s, and | posed with a full bush. No one in adult entertainment shaved back then. Now everybody does.” Although Martha Stewart is back on TV, you can be sure that she’ Il never give any suggestions on what to do about those big red razor bumps that result from shaving your vagina, so here’ s a helpful hint I’ d HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015343

like to pass along--they can be largely eliminated with, of all things, Visine eye drops. But pubic hair is practical; serves as a cushion against friction. The porn industry has played an important part in shaping pubic styles. Jordan Stein writes in an article titled Has Porn Gone Mainstream?: ‘Consider the near icon status the female porn star has achieved. She is sO mainstream that even good girls are imitating her various styles of undress, disappearing hair and all. Porn chic? You bet.” However, Julia Baird writes in Celebrity Porn. “The idea that the fashion industry can strip, then exhibit women in the name of ‘porn chic,’ is a bit silly, frankly. But ‘flesh is the new fabric’ could be the new catch-cry. Americans call their bush George W. It’ s fashionable--the curious fact is that it is fueled by the porn aesthetic that celebrities love to love.” Among Hollywood actresses, Gwyneth Paltrow and Kirstie Alley have both admitted favoring Brazilian wax jobs, where most of their pubic hair is removed, leaving a small tuft that remains hidden under a thong bikini. Sara Jessica Parker’ s character, Carrie Bradshaw, had her pubic hair removed during the third season of Sex /n the City. Presumably, it’ s now in the Smithsonian museum along with Archie Bunker’ s easy chair and the Fonz’ s leather jacket. HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015344

On ABC’ s Women’ s Murder Club, a medical examiner directs her gaze to the crotch of a female corpse and says, “That’ s not your mama’ s bikini wax." On 7he View, Joy Behar said, “No pubic hair creates a wind tunnel.” And in a hysterical episode of HBO’ s dark comedy series, Curb Your Enthusiasm, former Se/nfe/d producer Larry David performed oral sex on his wife, and in the process he sort of swallowed one of her pubic hairs. The next day, he was still choking on it, like a cat trying to get rid of a hairball. A psychologist at Harvard Medical School and author of Survival of the Prettiest: The Science of Beauty, Nancy Etcoff, writes that “There’ s also an erotic, sexual component to hairlessness because your skin is more sensitive when it’ s more exposed. Women today are emulating porn stars who have no pubic hair, and | think men like it.” My own resistance to the plethora of bald pussies stems from my pre-adolescent days when pubic hair was such a big taboo that | became obsessed with it. In those pre-bikini days, | would go to Coney Island and stroll around the sand, sneaking glances at ladies in the hope of finding a few stray curlicues of forbidden pubic hair peeking out from their various and sun-dried crotches. And if | was able to discover any, why, it felt as though | had experienced a really productive afternoon. HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015345

Betty Dodson, sex educator and producer of Viva La Vulva, says, “| think we have changing ideas about what’ s public and what’ s private. And now that nudity is more public--nude beaches, routine nudity in film, and the enormous amount of exhibitionism and porn on the Web--I’ m not surprised to see a trend toward pubic shaving. | think it’ s probably here to stay.” She told me that, “Thanks to the lack of a comprehensive sex education for kids, young girls now want their vulvas to look like porn stars because that's what their boyfriends jerk off to and prefer. It's all they know.” But a new study has concluded that pubic hair is returning: “The men don’ tcare and the women don’ tcan’ t bother.” Welcome back, good old bush. Hide and seek a friendly clit. Ironically, although Arnold Schwarzenegger was only joking when he announced that 4e was going to get a Bikini wax, actually Beverly Hills skin care and waxing expert Nance Mitchell has about fifty regular male customers that come for pubic waxing who “are not gay and they are not porn stars. Some go totally bare, some just do the shaft and up around the pelvic area.” She explains that “It depends on what their wives and girlfriends want. Men go along because removing the hair makes the whole package look bigger.” Ah, yes, the //usion of size does matter. HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015346

The Taste of Sperm Online sexology columnist Sandor Gardos was asked, “How do | increase the amount of my ejaculate? |’ ve noticed porn stars seem to ejaculate copious amounts of fluid, and |’ d like to be able to wow my partner.” Dr. Gardos points out that “the actors in porn films are professionals. Even they often don’ t ejaculate that much--sometimes movie makers will supplement with synthetic semen shot from a small tube.” Well, I' m just shocked to realize that somewhere in America there must be a group of scientists in a laboratory who earn their salaries by manufacturing fake semen. Meanwhile, ManNotIncluded.com has become the first cyberspace sperm bank for lesbians and single women who want to become pregnant. They are matched with anonymous donors who have the desired race, eye color, height and weight, then sent instructions on how to inseminate themselves. John Gonzalez, founder of the website, hopes this service will overcome the hurdles presented by bureaucracies and fertility clinics who are prejudiced against same-sex couples. HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015347

“Lesbians hook up with gay men all the time,” he says, “either friends or guys they’ ve met through personal ads. We are now simply allowing them to do so safely and without discrimination.” On the other hand, in the movie, Sarah Si/verman: Jesus ls Magic--a performance by one of the best and raunchiest female stand-up comedians--she describes a sure method of birth control: “coming all over her face.” Of course, that punchline is derived from the ever popular image on Internet porn sites, where | look in vain for the small print with messages warning, “Do Not Try This Particular Money Shot At Home” and “This ls Not Exactly What She Means When She Says She’ d Like To Get a Facial For Her Birthday.” Furthermore, in Chelsea, Michigan, Book Crafters has refused to print Baboon Dooley, Rock Critic, a collection of John Crawford’ s comic strip, because his protagonist accidentally drinks from a glass of semen. He spits it out upon learning the content, only to be called a sexist, and challenged: “You' d expect a woman to drink it, right?” However, on CNN, author Hugh Prather was a guest, and the subject was couples. A caller revealed his problem: “The trouble is, when | come in her mouth, she can’ t really swallow it all." The anchor quickly hung up on this premature ejaculation. HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015348

Cartoonist Mary Lawton depicted a character saying, “I just found out that alfalfa sprouts smell like sperm. Does this mean | should practice safe salad?” Yet humorist Jacqueline Shtuyote tells me that “Sperm is basically tasteless. The truth should be out about this. Men seem to think that their white stuff is a culinary delight, yet | know of no culinary courses extolling the flavor of sperm. And if, as rumored, Jack-in-the-Box cooks occasionally spill their cum on an irritating customer’ s hamburger, how many of us would be pleased with the added ingredient? “Why can’ t we find something that changes the flavor of cum? Then men could squirt red stuff that is raspberry flavored, or brown stuff that is chocolate flavored. Shy women could finally delight in swallowing their lover’ s cum. No sperm would ever be spit out again. There could be a pill to make cum taste like fast-food hamburgers. Maybe then we wouldn’ t mind if we found out that the secret sauce on top of Jack-in- the-Box hamburgers is, after all, sperm.” But let’ s not forget those who don’ t eat meat. They face an ethical dilemma--whether or not it’ s an acceptable practice for a vegetarian to give a blow job, and if so, is it all right to swallow? The general practice is that, yes, it’ s definitely okay to give a blow job because no animal is harmed in the process. And, yes, it’ s also okay to ingest the HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015349

sperm because it’ s a good source of protein, something that’ s often lacking when meat is removed from the diet. Finally--and this could possibly be an urban legend--in a biology class at Harvard University, a professor was discussing the high glucose levels found in semen which give the spermatozoa all that energy for their journey. A female freshman raised her hand and asked, “If | understand you correctly, you’ re saying there is a lot of glucose, as in sugar, in semen?” “That’ s correct,” replied the professor. The student asked, “Then why doesn’ t it taste sweet?” “It doesn’ t taste sweet,” he answered as she realized what her question implied. She blushed, picked up her books and headed for the door, as he continued, “because the taste buds for sweetness are on the tip of your tongue and not the back of your throat. Have a good day.” HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015350

Eating Shit for Fun and Profit | am in complete awe of the democracy of the Internet, which presents an infinite menu for individual tastes and ideologies, and in this context, specifically to viewers of online pornography. From golden showers to farm animals, the World Wide Web caters to virtually every imaginable desire. With the privacy provided by a computer screen, you can worship at the fetish of your choice. But, in the process of surfing porn sites—for research purposes only, of course—I realized that | had never come across a site specializing in coprophagia. It means eating shit. Literally. There’ s an old saying among nutritionists: “You are what you u eat.” However, comedian Darryl Henriques, playing the role of a New Age swami, says, “You are what you don’ t shit.” One of the nastiest things you can say to someone is, “Eat shit.” A nonfiction book, 7he Pit, reveals a strange cult in San Francisco where a group of successful businessmen were forced, along with other acts of humiliation, to eat their own shit. Ultimately, they were represented in a lawsuit by flamboyant attorney Melvin Belli. But that was more-or-less HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015351

involuntary shit eating, and what we’ re talking about here is the voluntary kind. For many years | heard stories that comic actor Danny Thomas, the star of Make Room for Daddy, was a coprophagiac. | assumed it was just another urban legend until | bumped into an old friend who was now working as a prostitute in Hollywood. Over lunch, she mentioned the names of some of her celebrity clients, including Danny Thomas. She told me how he had hired her to save her solid waste in her panties so that he could rub those panties on his face and gobble up her shit as though it were cotton candy. When he finished, he would wash his hands and face thoroughly then pay her and, as if coming out of a trance, he’ dsay, “Where was |?” He was trying to distance himself from what he had just done. Instant denial. Since then, | have believed that Danny Thomas’ s fundraising for Saint Jude’ s Hospital was really for the purpose of having secret access to their bedpans. Anyway, |! googled “eating shit.” Topping the list was “Shit Eating Grins: In Defense of Adam Sandler.” But sure enough, | was soon led to hardcore shit-eating sites, which | found totally disgusting, yet absolutely riveting. You may not want to read any further, but we both know you will. HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015352

There are photos of beautiful women shitting. If you click for a close- up you can spot a yellow kernel of corn in one big brown chunk o’ | shit. Women are spreading shit all over their naked bodies and inside their vaginas. A pair of lovely lesbians are eating handfuls of shit, then tongue kissing each other. Two women are eating the same lengthy turd, starting from opposite ends. A woman, fully dressed, wearing a mini-skirt, is shitting as she walks along the sidewalk. One woman is shitting into another woman’ s mouth. Mmmm, good to the last dingleberry. Among the shit-eating sites, there are Asian movies. Here’ s a couple of descriptions: “A bunch of kinky Japanese guys find some truly hot looking girls and take them down below the streets of Tokyo into a real sewer full of shit.” And “Cute Kyoko’ s diarrhea suddenly acts up again. Her piano teacher becomes a willing student of hot scat games. Lots of shit pours out of her hot ass into his waiting mouth. Then she asks if he would rub it all over her. ‘Sure, why not,’ he says.” If there is one particular image that remains in my mind’ s eye, it is an innocent-looking, attractive teenager—she’ s over 18, of course—and she is cheerfully drinking a shit shake through a straw in an old-fashioned, malted-milk glass. HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015353

| thought about her father discovering that video in cyberspace, yet he is unable to confront his daughter about it because he would then have to admit what Ae was doing at that site. | mean, this isn’ t exactly the type of thing that would be mass emailed by one of those selfless spammers, is it? And even if the father did confess to his daughter, he would undoubtedly hesitate to ask if he could eat Aer shit, because that could be considered a form of incest, and you have to draw the line somewhere, right? There must be an especially strong bond among coprophagiacs, though, because they have experienced in common a form of liberation from a taboo that can be traced all the way back to infancy, when a parent would cringe and say, “Stop! Don’ t eat that! | said nos Who knows, some day coprophagia might even become a religion? Holy shit! “| Fuck Dead People” HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015354

You don’ t see many porn sites that feature intercourse with corpses, and if you do, how do you know they’ re really dead? But, say what you will about California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, you have to give him credit for signing a bill to forbid necrophilia. Under the new law, sex with a corpse is now a felony punishable by up to eight years in prison. Age is no barrier. The state’ s first attempt to outlaw necrophilia--in response to a case of a man charged with having sex with the corpse of a 4-year-old girl in Southern California---stalled in a legislative committee, but the bill was revived after an unsuccessful prosecution of a man who was found in a San Francisco funeral home, passed out on top of an elderly woman’ s corpse. Necrophiliacs have been getting away with it all this time, but district attorneys will no longer be stymied by the lack of an official ban. According to Tyler Ochoa, a professor at Santa Clara University of Law who has studied California cases involving allegations of necrophilia, “Prosecutors didn’ t have anything to charge these people with other than breaking and entering. But if they worked in a mortuary in the first place, prosecutors couldn’ t even charge them with that.” HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015355

Whether necrophilia is a victimless crime may still be open to debate. Nevertheless, claiming that the act was consensual will not be considered as a legal defense. It should be noted that the necrophilia community ranges from those who are monogamous and stick with one partner for a lifetime, to those who are promiscuous and hop from casket to casket. According to his own journal entry, Ralph Waldo Emerson, one of the most revered figures in American literary history, was so devastated by the death of his young wife, Ellen, that, shortly after her burial, he went out to the cemetery one night and dug up her corpse, though he didn’ t mention exactly what he did with it. One of the most popular episodes of the police TV show, Homicide, Life On the Streets, was about the investigation of an old lonely widower, a mortician, who used to party with the corpses, setting them around a table as if they were alive. They investigated him because he shot a neighbor who knew about this practice, and then sat in the garden and waited for the cops. But again, the mortician’ s relationship with those corpses may have been purely platonic. Let us now eavesdrop on the dialogue of a few participants in an Internet support group, Necrophiliacs Anonymous: HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015356

“Obviously, neither a corpse nor a 4-year-old can provide consent, but if you leave permission in your will for your lonesome spouse or significant other to have one last fling with your mortal coil, shouldn’ t the state of California respect your wishes?” “| still think that organ donation is a better cause. It’ s just that | believe the only offense here is really violation of private property. | wonder if someone gives their partner, in a will, the right to have sex with their body after their death, will it be legal?” “Or, even without that permission, if you are an only heir of somebody, doesn’ t it mean their body belongs to you? It sounds gross, but isn’ t it an issue of private rights in the United States of America, that likes so much the idea of individualism and is ready to exploit people and the environment in the name of that ideal?” “| never understood why people think that having sex with a dead body is worse than raping a living person. To me, that’ s the worst kind, and then raping poor helpless animals. | really couldn’ t care less about my own dead body.” Conversely, Sam Kinison, the late evangelist who turned into a comedian, had a great routine about necrophilia: “Well, that’ s it, man-- I' m dead. Nothing else bad can happen to me now. Wait a minute-- HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015357

what’ s that? What’ s this guy doing? What’ s going on here? [Screams] Oh oh oh oh oh OH OH OH OH OH OOQQOQOHHHHHH NOOOOOOO!!! Live in Hell!!!” The majority of cannibalistic serial killers are motivated by a kind of necrophilia--it’ s usually a highly sexually arousing experience for them when they eat their victims. Here, from my “Great Moments in Necrophilia” file, is a dispatch from Associated Press: “The prosecution in the insanity trial of serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer rested its case. Dahmer has confessed to killing and dismembering 17 young males since 1978. A jury must decide if he will be sent to prison or a mental institution. The final prosecution witness, Dr. Park Dietz, a psychiatrist, testified that Dahmer wore condoms when having sex with his dead victims, showing that he could control his urge to have intercourse with corpses.” | smell a public service announcement there: “If Jeffrey Dahmer is sane enough to have safe sex, what about you?” HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015358

COMEDIANS HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015359

Remembering Lenny Bruce August 3, 2016 marked the 50™ anniversary of groundbreaking comedian Lenny Bruce’ s death from an overdose of morphine, while his New York obscenity conviction at Café Au Go Go was still on appeal. On that same day he received a foreclosure notice at his Los Angeles home. But it wasn’ t a suicide. In the kitchen, a kettle of water was still boiling, and in his office, the electric typewriter was still humming. He had stopped typing in mid-word: “Conspiracy to interfere with the 4" Amendment const” ...constitutes what, | wondered. Lenny was a subscriber to my satirical magazine, 7he Realist and in 1959 we met for the first time at the funky Hotel America in Times Square. He was amazed that | got away with publishing those profane words for which other periodicals used asterisks or dashes. He had been using euphemisms like “frig” and asked, “Are you telling me this is legal to sell on the newsstands?” | replied, “The Supreme Court's definition of obscenity is that it has to be material which appeals to your prurient interest.” He magically produced an unabridged dictionary from the suitcase on his bed, and looked up the word “prurient.” He closed the dictionary, clenching his HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015360

jaw and nodding his head in affirmation of a new discovery. “So,” he observed, “it’ s against the law to get you horny.” When we were about to leave the room, he stood in the doorway. “Did you steal anything?” he asked furtively. | took my watch out of my pocket since | didn't like to wear it on my wrist, and without saying a word | placed it on the bureau. Lenny laughed one loud staccato “Ha” and kissed me on the forehead. We developed a friendship integrated with stand-up comedy. In_ his act Lenny had broken through traditional stereotypical jokes about airplane food, nagging wives, Chinese drivers, annoying mothers-in-law. Instead he weaved his taboo-breaking targets--teachers' low salaries versus show-business celebs, religious leaders’ hypocrisy, cruel abortion laws, racial injustice, the double standard between illegal and prescription drugs--into stream-of-consciousness vignettes. In each succeeding performance, he would sculpt and re-sculpt his concept into a theatrical context, experimenting from show to show like a verbal jazz musician. Audience laughter would sometimes turn into clapping for the creative process itself. “Please don't applaud,” he’ d request. “It breaks my rhythm.” HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015361

Lenny was writing an autobiography--How to Talk Dirty and Influence People--which Playboy planned to serialize, then publish as a book, and they hired me as his editor. We met in Atlantic City, where he was taking Delaudid for lethargy, and he sent a telegram to a contact, with a phrase--DE LAWD IN DE SKY--as a code to send a doctor's prescription. At a certain point he was acting paranoid and demanded that | take a lie-detector test, and | was paranoid enough to take him literally. | couldn't work with him if he didn't trust me. We got into an argument, and | left. He sent a telegram that sounded like we were on the verge of divorce. “WHY CAN'T IT BE THE WAY IT USED TO BE?” he wrote. | agreed to try again, and in 1962 | flew to Chicago. Lenny was performing at the Gate of Horn, where he was asking the whole audience to take a lie- detector test. Lenny was intrigued by the implications of an item in 7he Realist, an actual statement by Adolf Eichmann that he would have been “not only a scoundrel, but a despicable pig” if he hadn't carried out Hitler's orders. Lenny wrote a piece for 7he Realist “Letter From a Soldier's Wife,” namely Mrs. Eichmann pleading for compassion to spare her husband's life. HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015362

Lenny had been reading a study of anti-Semitism by Jean-Paul Sartre. Now, on stage, giving credit to Thomas Merton's poem about the Holocaust, he requested that all the lights go off except one dim blue spot. Then he began speaking with a German accent: My name is Adolf Eichmann. And the Jews came every day to what they thought would be fun in the showers. People say | should have been hung. We/n. Do you recognize the whore in the middle of you-that you would have done the same if you were there yourselves? My defense: | was a soldier. | saw the end of a conscientious day's effort. | watched through the portholes. | saw every Jew burned and turned into soap. Do you people think yourselves better because you burned your enemies at long distance with missiles without ever seeing what you had done to them? Hiroshima auf Wiedersehen. [German accent ends.] If we would have lost the war, they would have strung Truman up by the balls, Jim. Are you kidding with that? Not what kid told kid told kid. They would just sch/ep out all those Japanese mutants. “Here they did; there they are.” And Truman said they'd do it again. That's what they should have the same day as Remember Pearl Harbor. Play them in unison. Lenny was arrested for obscenity that night. One of the items in the Chicago police report complained: “Then talking about the war he stated, ‘If we would have lost the war, they would have strung Truman up by the balls.’ ” The cops also broke open Lenny's candy bars, looking for drugs. They checked the IDs of audience members, including George Carlin, who told the cops, “I don’ t believe in IDs.” Then they arrested him for disorderly conduct, dragged him along by the seat of his pants and hoisted him into the police wagon. HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015363

“What are you doing here?” Lenny asked. “| didn’ t want to show them my ID.” “You schmuck.” Lenny was released on bail, but the head of the Vice Squad warned the Gate of Horn manager: “If this man ever uses a four-letter word in this club again, I'm going to pinch you and everyone in here. If he ever speaks against religion, I'm going to pinch you and everyone in here. Do you understand? You've had good people here. But he mocks the pope-- and I'm speaking as a Catholic--l'm here to tell you your license is in danger. We're going to have someone here watching every show.” And indeed, the Gate of Horn's liquor license was suspended. There were no previous allegations against the club, and the current charge involved neither violence nor drunken behavior. The only charge pressed by the city prosecutor was Lenny Bruce's allegedly obscene performance. Nobody’ s prurience was aroused, but that made no difference. After all, there wasn’ t any law against blasphemy. “Chicago is so corrupt, it’ s thrilling,” Lenny said. Chicago had the largest membership in the Roman Catholic Church of any archdiocese in the country. Lenny’'s jury consisted entirely of Catholics. The judge was Catholic. The prosecutor and his assistant were HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015364

Catholic. On Ash Wednesday, the judge removed the spot of ash from his forehead and told the bailiff to instruct the others to do likewise. The sight of a judge, two prosecutors and twelve jurors, every one with a spot of ash on their foreheads, would have all the surrealistic flavor of a Lenny Bruce fantasy. Since he often talked on stage about his environment, and since police cars and courtrooms had become his environment, the content of Lenny's performances began to revolve more and more around the inequities of the legal system. “In the Halls of Justice,” he declared, “the only justice is in the halls.” But he also said, “I love the law.” Instead of an unabridged dictionary, he now carried law books in his suitcase. His room was cluttered with tapes and transcripts and photostats and law journals and legal briefs. Once he was teasing his ten-year-old daughter, Kitty, by pretending not to believe what she was telling him. “Daddy,” she said, “you'd believe me if it was on tape.” Lenny's jazz jargon was gradually being replaced by legal jargon. He had become intimate not only with the statutes concerning obscenity and narcotics but also with courtroom procedure, and his knowledge would be HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015365

woven into his performances. But as clubs became increasingly afraid to hire him, he devoted more and more time and energy to the law. In less than two years, Lenny was arrested 15 times. Club owners were afraid to book him. He couldn’ t get a gig in six months. On a Christmas day, he was alone in his hotel room, and | brought him a $500 bill. With a large safety pin, he attached it to his denim jacket. When he finally got a booking in Monterey, he admitted, “I feel like it's taking me away from my work.” Lenny lived way up in the hills. His house was protected by barbed wire and a concrete gate, except that it was always open. He had a wall-to- wall one-way mirror in his living room, but when the sun was shining you could see into the room instead of out. He was occasionally hassled by police on his own property. One evening in October 1963, we were talking while he was shaving, when four officers suddenly appeared, loud and obnoxious. He asked them to leave unless they had a search warrant. One of the cops took out his gun. “Here's my search warrant,” he said. Then Lenny and the cops had a discussion about the law, such as the rules of evidence, and after half an hour they left. Lenny tried to take it all in stride, but the encounter was depressing, and he changed his mind about going out that night. HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015366

When everything was quiet, we went outside and stood at the edge of his unused swimming pool. Dead leaves floated in the water. Lenny cupped his hands to his mouth. “All right, you dogs,” he called out. “Bark for the rich man!” --thereby setting off a chain reaction of barking dogs, a canine chorus echoing through Hollywood Hills. We ordered some pizza, and he played some old tapes, ranging from a faith healer to patriotic World War II songs. “Good-bye, Mama, I'm off to Yokohama, the Land of Yama-Yama...” Back at the Café Au Go Go arrest in New York, Lenny had told a fantasy tale about Eleanor Roosevelt, quoting her, “I've got the nicest tits that have ever been in this White House...” The top of the police complaint was “Eleanor Roosevelt and her display of tits.” At the trial, Lenny acted as his own attorney. He had obtained the legislative history of an Albany statute, and he discovered that back in 1931 there was an amendment proposed, which excluded from arrest in an indecent performance: Stagehands, spectators, musicians, and--here was the fulcrum of his defense--actors. The law had been misapplied to him. Despite opposition by the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, the amendment was finally signed into law by then-Governor Roosevelt, but to no avail. HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015367

“Ignoring the mandate of Franklin D. Roosevelt,” Lenny observed, “‘is a great deal more offensive than saying Eleanor has lovely nay-nays.” On October 13, 1965 (Lenny's 40" birthday), instead of surrendering to the authorities in New York, he filed suit at the U.S. District Court in San Francisco to keep out of prison, and he got himself officially declared a pauper. Two months before his death in 1966, Lenny wrote to me: “I'm still working on the bust of the government of New York State.” And he included his doodle of Christ nailed to a crucifix, with a speech balloon asking, “Where the hell is the ACLU?” After he died, at a séance, his mother brought his old faded denim jacket. That large safety pin was still attached to it. And at the funeral, his sound engineer friend dropped Lenny's microphone into his grave before the dirt was piled on. Lenny's problem had been that he wanted to talk on stage with the same freedom that he had in his living room. That problem doesn’ t happen to stand-up comedians any more. As for me, I’ m working on my long awaited (by me) first novel. It’s about a contemporary Lenny Bruce-type satirist. Those scenes where my protagonist performs, I’ve developed onstage myself, although at times it felt like I was actually channeling Lenny, until the day that he said, ““C’mon, Paul, HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015368

you know you don't believe in that shit.” Well, this ended that wishful- thinking delusion. I told my friend Avery Corman--author of Oh, God and Kramer vs. Kramer-- how I welcomed the challenge of writing fiction. “But, you know,” I added, “it’s really hard to write. You have to make everything up.” And he said, “Hey, listen, you’ve been making stuff up all your life.” “Yeah, but that was journalism.” HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015369

My Acid Trip With Groucho Marx LSD was influencing music, painting, spirituality, and even the stock market. Tim Leary once let me listen in on a call from a Wall Street broker thanking him for turning him onto acid because it gave him the courage to sell short. Leary had a certain sense of pride about the famous folks he and his associates had introduced to the drug. “But,” he told me, “I consider Otto Preminger one of our failures.” | first met Preminger in 1960 while | was conducting a panel on censorship for Playboy. He had defied Hollywood's official seal of approval by refusing to change the script of 7he Moon /s Blue. He wouldn't take out the word virgin. At the end of our interview, he asked, “Ven you tronscripe dis, vill you vix op my Henglish?” “Oh, sure,” | replied quickly. “Of course.” “Vy? Vot's drong viz my Henglish?” | saw Preminger again in 1967. He was making a movie called Skidoo, starring Jackie Gleason as a retired criminal. Preminger told me he had originally intended that role for Frank Sinatra. Skidoo was pro-acid HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015370

propaganda thinly disguised as a comedy adventure. However, LSD was not why the FBI was annoyed with the film. Rather, according to Gleason's FBI files, the FBI objected to one scene in the script where a file cabinet is stolen from an FBI building. Gleason was later approved as a special FBI contact in the entertainment business. One of the characters in Skidoo was a Mafia chieftain named God. Screenwriter Bill Cannon had suggested Groucho Marx for the part. Preminger said it wasn't a good idea, but since they were already shooting, and that particular character was needed on the set in three days, Groucho would be playing God after all. During one scene, Preminger was screaming instructions at him. Groucho yelled back, “Are you drunk?" | had dinner with him that evening. He was concerned about the script of Skidoo because it pretty much advocated LSD, which he had never tried, but he was curious. Moreover, he felt a certain responsibility to his young audience not to steer them wrong. He had read my descriptions of acid trips, so he asked if | could | possibly get him some pure stuff, and would | care to accompany him on a trip? | did not play hard to get. We arranged to ingest those little 300-microgram white tablets one afternoon at the home of an actress in Beverly Hills. HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015371

Groucho was especially interested in the countercultural aspects of LSD. | mentioned a couple of incidents that particularly tickled him, and his eyes sparkled with delight. One was about how, on Haight Street, runaway youngsters, refugees from their own families, had stood outside a special tourist bus—guided by a driver “trained in sociological significance” --and they held mirrors up to the cameras pointing at them from the windows, so that the tourists would get photos of themselves trying to take photos. The other was about the day that LSD became illegal. In San Francisco, at precisely two o'clock in the afternoon, a cross-fertilization of mass protest and tribal celebration had taken place, as several hundred young people simultaneously swallowed tabs of acid while the police stood by helplessly “Internal possession wasn't against the law,” | explained to Groucho. “And they trusted their friends more than they trusted the government,” he said. “I like that.” We had a period of silence and a period of listening to music. | was accustomed to playing rock’ n’ roll while tripping, but the record collection at this house consisted entirely of classical music and Broadway show albums. First, we listened to the “Bach Cantata No. 7.” m HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015372

supposed to be Jewish,” Groucho said, “but | was seeing the most beautiful visions of Gothic cathedrals. Do you think Bach knew he was doing that?” “| don't know. | was seeing beehives and honeycombs myself.” Later, we were listening to the score of a musical comedy, Fanny. There was one song called “Welcome Home," where the lyrics go something like, “Welcome home, says the clock,” and the chair says, “Welcome home,” and so do various other pieces of furniture. Groucho started acting out each line, as though he were actually beng greeted by the clock, the chair, and the rest of the furniture. He was like a child, charmed by his own ability to respond to the music that way. There was a bowl of fruit on the dining room table. During a snack, he said, “I never thought eating a nice juicy plum would be the biggest thrill of my life.” Then we talked about the sexual revolution. Groucho asked, “Have you ever laid two ladies together?” | told him about the time that | was being interviewed by a couple of students from a Catholic girls’ school. Suddenly Sheila, 7he Reaj/ist's “Scapegoat,” and Marcia, the “Shit-On” --she had given herself that title because “What could be lower than a Scapegoat?” --walked out of their office totally nude. “Sorry to interrupt, Paul,” said Sheila, “but it's HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015373

Wednesday--time for our weekly orgy.” The interviewers left in a hurry. Sheila and Marcia led me up the stairs to my loft bed, and we had a delicious threesome. It had never happened before, and it would never happen again. At one point in our conversation, Groucho somehow got into a negative space. He was equally cynical about institutions, such as marriage-- “legal quicksand” --and individuals, such as Lyndon Johnson, referred to as “that potato-head.” Eventually, | asked, “What gives you hope?” He thought for a moment. Then he just said one word: “People.” | told him about the sketch | had written for Steve Allen, “Unsung Heroes of Television,” with the man whose job it was on You Bet Your Life to wait for the secret word to be said so that he could drop the duck down, and Groucho told me about one of his favorite contestants on the show. “He was an elderly gentleman with white hair, but quite a chipper fellow. | asked him what he did to retain his sunny disposition. ‘Well, I'll tell you, Groucho,’ he says, ‘every morning | get up and | make a choice to be happy that day.’” Groucho was holding onto his cigar for a long time, but he never smoked it, he only sniffed it occasionally. “Everybody has their own Laurel HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015374

and Hardy,” he mused. “A miniature Laurel and Hardy, one on each shoulder. Your little Oliver Hardy bawls you out--he says, ‘Well, this is a fine mess you've gotten us into.’ And your little Stan Laurel gets all weepy-—--Oh, Ollie, | couldn't help it. I'm sorry, | did the best | could.’ ” Later, when Groucho started chuckling to himself, | hesitated to interrupt his reverie, but | had to ask, “What struck you funny?” “| was thinking about this movie, Skidoo," he said. “Il mean some of it is just plain ridiculous. This hippie inmate puts a letter he got, which is soaked in LSD, into the water supply of the prison, and suddenly everybody gets completely reformed. There's a prisoner who says, ‘Oh, gosh, now | don't have to be a rapist any more!’ But it's also sophisticated in its own way. | like how Jackie Gleason, the character he plays, accepts the fact that he's not the biological father of his daughter.” “Oh, really? That sounds like the ultimate ego loss.” “But I'm really getting a big kick out of playing somebody named God like a dirty old man. You wanna know why?” “Typecasting?” “No, no--it's because--do you realize that irreverence and reverence are the same thing?’ “Always?” HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015375

“If they're not, then it's a misuse of your power to make people laugh.” His eyes began to tear. “That's funny. I'm not even sad.” Then he went to urinate, and when he came back, he said, “You know, everybody is waiting for miracles to happen. But the whole Auman body is a goddamn miracle.” He recalled Otto Preminger telling him about his own response to taking LSD and then he mimicked Preminger's accent: “I saw tings, bot | did not zee myself.” Groucho was looking in a mirror on the dining room wall, and he said, “Well, | can see myself, but | still don't understand what the hell I'm dosng here... ." A week later, Groucho told me that members of the Hog Farm commune who were extras in the movie had turned him on with marijuana on the set of Skidoo. “You know,” | said, “my mother once warned me that LSD would lead to pot.” “Well,” he said, “ your mother was right.” When Skidoo was released, Tim Leary saw it, and he cheerfully admitted, “I was fooled by Otto Preminger. He's much hipper than me.” In 1971, during an interview with F/ash magazine, Groucho said, “I think the only hope this country has is Nixon's assassination.” Yet he wasn't subsequently arrested for threatening the life of a president. In view of the indictment against Black Panther David Hilliard for using similar HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015376

rhetoric, | wrote to the Justice Department to find out the status of their case against Groucho, and received this reply: Dear Mr. Krassner: Responding to your inquiry, the Supreme Court has held that Title 18 U.S.C., Section 871, prohibits only “true” threats. It is one thing to say that “I (or we will kill Richard Nixon” when you are the leader of an organization which advocates killing people and overthrowing the Government; it is quite another to utter the words which are attributed to Mr. Marx, an alleged comedian. It was the opinion of both myself and the United States Attorney in Los Angeles (where Marx's words were alleged to have been uttered) that the latter utterance did not constitute a “true” threat. Very Truly Yours, James L. Browning, Jr. United States Attorney It would later be revealed that the FBI had published pamphlets in the name of the Black Panthers, advocating the killing of cops, and that an FBI file on Groucho Marx had indeed been started, and he actually was labeled a “national security risk.” | phoned Groucho to tell him the good news. “| deny everything,” he said, “because | lie about everything.” He paused, then added, “And everything | denyis a lie.” The last time | saw Groucho was in 1976. He was speaking at the Los Angeles Book Fair. He looked frail and unsmiling, but he was alert and irascible as ever. He took questions from the audience. “Are you working on a film now?” HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015377

“No, I'm answering silly questions.” “What are your favorite films?” “Duck Soup. Night at the Opera." “What do you think about Richard Nixon?” “He should be in jail.” “Is humor an important issue in the presidential campaign?” “Get your finger out of your mouth.” “What do you dream about?” “Not about you.” “What inspired you to write?” “A fountain pen. A piece of paper.” Then | called out a question: “What gives you the most optimism?” | expected him to say “People” again, but this time he said, “The world.” There was hardly any standing room left in the auditorium, yet one fellow was sitting on the floor rather than take the aisle seat occupied by a large Groucho Marx doll. HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015378

Remembering George Carlin George Carlin died in June 2008. He was a generous friend. When | performed in Los Angeles, he sent a limousine to pick me up at the airport, and | stayed at his home. And such a sweet man. When | 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. | watched 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. | said, “You really show respect for everybody.” “Well,” he responded, “that's just the way / 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 and watch it, because he would devote the first ten minutes of his performance to the subject of abortion. HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015379

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?” | 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 Aj/s 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 /s a dirty word -- but repressed words about sexual functions and bodily parts were truly funny. | had only been thinking about the ‘dirty’ words in terms of sex and bodily functions, and how uptight these religious freaks have made us. 7hat’ sfun, 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: HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015380

Upon my death, | 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. | wish no public service of any kind. | wish no religious service of any kind. | 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. Roasting With Robin HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015381

The first time | met Robin Williams was in 1976 at the first annual Comedy Competition in San Francisco. He was sweating profusely, his hairy chest and arms showing, and he wore a brown cowboy hat. | was one of the judges. Although | voted for Williams, he came in second. | forget the winner’ s name, but | recall that the lights went off in the middle of his act, so he took advantage of the accident, and in the darkness he whispered loudly, “Okay, now, when the lights go back on, everybody shout out, ‘Surprise! Surprise!’ “ The audience laughed and applauded that ad lib. Robin’ s disappointment was palpable, but his stardom was inevitable. Our paths continued to cross backstage at benefits where we both performed. He was also a reader of 7he Realist. In 1988, the word got around that | was going to undergo surgery, and he sent me a generous unsolicited check to help. In 1998, Anita Hoffman, Abbie’ s widow, dying from cancer, decided to take her life on December 27, so as not to spoil Christmas for family and friends who were visiting and bringing all kinds of food. Her appetite was ravenous, and her humor was dark. After devouring a pastrami sandwich, she remarked, “I better brush my teeth, | don’ t want to get gum pockets.” HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015382

She was staying at a house in San Francisco owned by actress Wynona Rider, whose godfather was Timothy Leary. He had been Anita’ s role model during the final months of A/s life. “You couldn’ t choose how and when and with whom you were born,” he said, “but you can take charge of your own death.” And that’ s exactly what she was now doing. Robin Williams learned about Anita’ s situation from his co-star in Good Will Hunting, Matt Damon, who had been told about it by his girlfriend, Wynona. Robin had never met Anita, but he called and offered to pay a visit, in keeping with his benign case of Patch Adams Syndrome. After all, if Patch could travel to Trinidad to entertain murderers who would be hanged three days later, why shouldn’ t it be appropriate for Robin to make Anita laugh on Christmas day? She hesitated— “l’ ve never really been a fan of his work,” she thought—but then invited him to visit... And so it came to pass in 2014 that Robin Williams would also commit suicide. In the midst of mass mourning him, Rush Limbaugh explained that “Leftists are never happy.” And the anti-choice Lifenews claimed that Robin killed himself out of guilt over an abortion his girlfriend had in the 1970s. HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015383

The last time | saw him was in 1987 on a Saturday evening at the Hollywood Press Club, where we were both participants at a roast for Harlan Ellison, the prolific author of fantasy, science-fiction and speculative- fiction, his work including 1,700 short stories. He also had a reputation for angry ranting with literary style. My wife Nancy said, “He has a black belt in Mouth.” The roast was supposedly a fundraiser for his defense in a frivolous libel lawsuit. Although the auditorium was filled at $25 a head, the plaintiff, Michael Fleischer, was suing Ellison for a million dollars. In a 1980 issue of Comics Journal, in a review of Fleischer’ s comic-book-novel, Ellison called him “crazy” like H.P. Lovecraft and other renowned writers. Ironically, Harlan had intended it to be a compliment. Screenwriter David Gerrold remarked, “The fact that Ellison is a self- made man relieves God of a great responsibility. I' ve been Harlan’ s friend for six years. Of course, I’ ve known him for eighteen years.” The moderator of the roast, film critic Digby Diehl, read a telegram from Isaac Asimov, which concluded, “Kick him in the balls—signed, Frank Sinatra.” Onstage, Asimov’ s_ fellow science-fiction writer Robert Silverberg announced that “Harlan Ellison is so short that he goes up on HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015384

his girlfriend.” Robin and | were sitting next to each other, and we simultaneously crossed that joke off our imaginary lists. There were short-jokes galore. Have a few free samples: “Short? | carry a life-sized portrait of Harlan in my wallet.” “Harlan’ s parents were normal, but the milkman was a syphilitic dwarf.” And the producer of Twilight Zone, Phil de Guere, complained, “It took Harlan nine months before he figured out how to shoot himself in the foot at 7wilight Zone and get canned. But of all the people | have worked with, Harlan is by far the shortest. Harlan doesn’ t have a short fuse. He /sa short fuse.” My own short-joke was, “Actually, this isn’ t a roast. It’ s more like a microwave.” Robin said, “Harlan is a tall Paul Williams, a white Paul Simon.” | pointed out that “Harlan is on the right side of a lot of important fights. He’ s fought against racism and sexism. That’ s why this whole panel is white males.” A roast by definition overflows with irreverence, insults, and raunchiness. Examples: “If it’ s true that you are what you eat, Harlan would be a vagina.” Stan Lee of comic-book infamy said, “Harlan is a very difficult person to arouse. Ask any of his former wives.” And Robin contributed a metaphorical dick joke: “If you’ re hung like a field mouse, don’ t stand in the wind.” HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015385

| stated that “Harlan is an egomaniac partially because at the moment of sexual climax, he calls out his own name.” Robin shouted: “Was it good for me?” | responded, “Harlan has a typewriter with only two letters—M and E. And on it he has somehow managed to write 42 books as well as 300 of Steve Allen’ s songs plus a few of Lyndon LaRouche’ s speeches.” Robert Psycho Block remembered when “Harlan was interested in re-writing other people’ s work. He took me into a nearby drugstore and showed me how he had erased all the M’ s off all the Murine bottles.” | observed that “Harlan has always refused to get involved with the drug world—as a user. However, he /s a dealer. In fact, he was the connection for Kathy Evelyn Smith.” A severe groan emanated from the audience, and | realized that | was treating a roaster as a roastee, not an uncommon practice. Robin Williams and Robert DeNiro had been with Smith and John Belushi on the night of Belushi’ s death. “Oh, that’ s a good one,” Robin said with understandable Sarcasm 101. “Listen,” | replied, “if she didn’ t plea- bargain, you wouldn’ t be here tonight.” Moderator Digby Diehl proceeded to rub salt in Robin’ s wound that | had unintentionally caused: “Robin Williams has been called the HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015386

king of improv, and he has proven it tonight by interrupting everybody, stepping on their lines, doing schtick. He’ s been about as annoying he can be.” “| loved that review, though,” said Robin, referring to Diehl’ s negative critique of C/ub Paradise. Diehl: “I was hoping you hadn’ t seen it, Robin. It’ s said of you in Hollywood that you don’ t read your scripts. Anyway, ladies and gentlemen, I’ d like to bring you Robin Williams, fresh from C/ub Paradise, his biggest failure yet.” Williams: “Thank you, Gary Franklin [the movie reviewer Diehl replaced]. What can you say about a man who’ s a TV critic? A man who looks at a good film and letters it like a report card. Is that art? | think not. And I’ d like to thank Harlan’ s lawyer for proving, God, is there a reason for law? | think not. And I’ d like to thank Mr. Krassner for all the Kathy Smith references. That’ s some funny stuff.” Robin confessed, “I really don’ t know Harlan for shit,” then described his house. “ It’ s like Notre Dame done by Sears. There’ s Harlan, naked, playing in his toys with a beautiful shiksa goddess jumping up and down saying, ‘I like him. He’ s smart.’ " Robin morphed into a little boy in the bathroom. “I'’ m reading Bradbury, dad.” (Roaster Ray HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015387

Bradbury chortled. Robin suppressed a fake sob.) “It' s just taken me so far down to be here. | wish | could cry but | don’ t care.” (The audience applauded.) “Well,” said Diehl, “it’ s been basically a really hostile, ugly night, with a lot of lame jokes and sentimental drivel. But we still have the ritual forgiveness to look forward to.” He introduced Harlan Ellison, “a man with the milk of human kindness dripping from his fangs.” “Ha, ha. Very funny, I’ m sure,” Harlan reacted. “I had a friend once, but the wheels fell off. Zip friends. Dust is my friend. And what of these fuckers here? Robin Williams can’ t even get a pair of pants that fits him.” “There’ s areason for that, Harlan.” “Yeah, sure. It was for you they made up the phrase, ‘Is it in yet?’ You wanna talk about that, Williams? I’ ve got four words for you: C/ub Paradise and The Survivors.” “Yeah, on a double bill with Man With a Dog [Ellison wrote the screenplay].” Harlan continued to baste the roasters. As for me, he said, “I want to thank my old chum Krassner for being here tonight. | want to commend him on his restraint in the remarks he made. Or perhaps it was only HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015388

caution on his part because | promised if he fucked around with me, |’ d let on that he caught his herpes from Nancy Reagan.” Digby Diehl concluded, “Harlan’ s only fear is that he’ Il get in a car accident and have to re-live this event. And in the true tradition of roasting, that tradition being to talk dirty and mention a big name, thank you all for coming. And join us next week when our guest roaster will be Mother Teresa.” | blurted out, “I fucked her.” The audience screamed, hooted, stomped, and Robin jumped out of his chair and ran around in a circle. Then he said, “Gandhi is going, ‘Who is this man? He may not get through the gates of heaven for that line’ ” Harlan said, “Thank God Krassner got off one good one.” | explained, “I guess | just fell into the insult mode.” “Basically,” said Robert Silverberg, “the roast is a really ugly, repugnant, immature and childish art form. | hate it. And | will only do one if Harlan is the target.” And on our way home, Nancy summed up the irony: “A compliment was originally perceived as an insult, and consequently we’ ve had an evening of insults which were really compliments.” HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015389

Remembering Dick Gregory | first met Dick Gregory when he asked me to interview him for 7he Realist in New York. | saw him again when | was in Chicago. He was performing at the Playboy Club and invited me to his show. Two years previously, Negro comedians performed only in Negro nightclubs, and Gregory was no exception. But one evening the regular white comic at the Playboy Club got sick, and Gregory took his place. It made 7ime magazine, and he was invited to perform on the Jonight Show, but he declined unless, after doing his stand-up act, he would be asked to sit down and talk with Jack Paar. The gamble worked, and Gregory became an instant celebrity, breaking through the color barrier with humor. Eventually we became friends and fellow demonstrators. Now he was performing at the Playboy Club, not as a substitute comic but as a star attraction. They had to supply me with a jacket, and a tie that was decorated all over with bunny symbols. Gregory was already on stage. HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015390

“How could Columbus discover America,” he was asking the audience, “when the Indians were already here?’ In his dressing room between shows, Gregory took out his wallet and showed me a tattered copy of his favorite poem, “If,” by Rudyard Kipling. | laughed and he looked offended, until | explained that | was laughing because it was also my favorite poem, and “the unforgiving minute” was my favorite poetic phrase. Gregory visited me on the lower east side of New York. The entire side of one building on that block featured a fading advertisement for a cleanser personified by the Gold Dust Twins, a pair of little Negro boys. It had originally been painted right on the bricks. When he saw it, he said, “They ought to take that whole wall and preserve it in a museum somewhere.” kok # On a work-vacation in the Florida Keys with Abbie and Anita Hoffman in December in 1967. | followed a neighborhood crow down the road, then continued walking to town by myself to use the telephone. First | called Gregory, since it was his city Chicago that we were planning to invade the presidential convention in the 1968 summer. He told me that HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015391

he had decided to run for president, and he wanted to know if | thought Bob Dylan would make a good vice president. “Oh, sure, but to tell you the truth, | don't think Dylan would ever get involved in electoral politics.” Gregory would end up with assassination researcher Mark Lane as his running mate. Next, | called Jerry Rubin in New York to arrange for a meeting when we returned. At our counter-convention we all attended an Unbirthday Party for President Lyndon Johnson at the Coliseum, with Ed Sanders, leader of the Fugs, serving as emcee. The atmosphere was highly emotional. Dick Gregory recited the Preamble to the Declaration of Independence with incredible fervor. Fists were being upraised in the audience as he spoke, and | thrust my own fist into the air for the first time. kok # When my marriage broke up in 1971 | moved to San Francisco and | had my own talk program. Gregory announced on my show that, until the war in Vietnam was over, he was going to stop eating solid foods. | in turn announced that, until the war was over, | was going to eat all of Dick Gregory's meals. Actually, my only rea/ discipline was being silent one day a week. HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015392

When my young daughter Holly came out to stay with me that summer, she decided to join me on my silent day. We communicated with handwritten notes. Holly wrote, Does /aughter count? Since we were making up the rules as we went along, | answered, Yes, but no tickling. Naturally she tried to make me laugh, but | held it in - and got a rush. All the energy that normally gets dissipated into the air with laughter seemed to surge through my body instead. | decided to stop laughing altogether, just to see what would happen. The more | didn't laugh, the more | found funny. And, paying closer attention to others, | refined my appreciation of laughter as another whole language that could often be more revealing than words. Sometimes | would get a twinge of guilt if | nearly slipped and laughed, and | remembered what | had always known, that children must be taught to be serious. When | mentioned my laugh-fast to Dick Gregory, still on his food-fast, it didn't sound so far- fetched to him. That's two things people do out of insecurity,” he said. “Eating and laughing.” “Well, what would happen to us if everyone in our audiences realized that?” “Brother, we'd go out of business.” HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015393

| was invited to a Christmas party in 1977 by Hust/er publisher Larry Flynt. Gregory was at the party, and Flynt asked each of us to perform, but first he would take the microphone himself. To my surprise-shock that he wanted me to publish his magazine beside 7he Realist while he traveled around the country to spread his (temporary) born-again Chrisianity. On Thanksgiving Day, Gregory had been arrested in front of the White House for protesting the lack of human rights in South Africa. Larry Flynt had a premonition that there would be an assassination attempt on Gregory. Flynt contacted him a couple of weeks later, and they became friends. Gregory was now staying at Flynt's mansion in Columbus, helping him change to a vegetarian diet. Flynt had already taken off forty pounds. On the day before the Christmas party, Gregory was in the middle of giving himself an enema when Flynt walked in. According to Gregory, “Larry said, ‘Let me tell you about this fantastic guy I've got comin’ out, and | don't know what I'm gonna do yet but | just wanna talk with him.’ And | said, ‘Well, who is it?’ He said, ‘Paul Krassner.’ And | just fell out, and said, ‘Are you serious? He's one of the hippest minds in the whole world.’ Then he came back and said, HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015394

‘How long you been knowin’ him?’ and | told him, ‘All through the sixties,’ you know. And | said it was a fantastic idea.” For the New Year, Flynt flew Gregory and me to the Bahamas. Gregory was in the kitchen, diligently preparing a health drink for Flynt — this must have been the birth of his Bahamian Diet powder -— and he was also feeding unfiltered conspiracy theories to his eager student. At midnight, we all went out on the dock and stood in a misty drizzle as Gregory uttered truly eloquent prayers for each of us. When he finished, Flynt’ s wife Althea whined, like Lucy in the Peanuts strip, “My hair's getting all wet.” It was her way of saying “Amen.” On New Year's Day, we were sitting in the sand, just relaxing. Flynt had bought a paperback novel by Gore Vidal in the hotel store, but first he was reading the Sunday New York Times and worrying about the implications of juries with only six members. A moment later he was rubbing suntan lotion on my back. “I'll bet Hugh Hefner never did this for you,” he said. koe OF Larry Flynt had been traveling around a lot, but he happened to be back in L.A. at the same time that my friend LSD guru Ram Dass was visiting, so | had the unique pleasure of introducing them. Larry, Althea, HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015395

Ram Dass and | went to a health-food restaurant, where we discovered that we shared something in common: we were all practicing celibacy — Larry at the suggestion of Dick Gregory, Althea by extension, Ram Dass for spiritual purposes, and me just for the sheer perversity of it. When Larry got shot down south by a racist nut because Hust/er had a black naked model, Althea had transformed the Coca-Cola Suite at Emory University Hospital into her office, where she was now studying the Slides of the irreverent “Jesus and the Adulteress” feature. Dick Gregory was there, and he said, “This scares me" He was concerned about reaction in the Bible Belt, notwithstanding the fact that Hust/er's research department had already made certain that the text followed the Bible. And now Althea was checking for any sexism that might have slipped past the male editors’ limited consciousness. The spread was already in page forms, but not yet collated into the magazine, and there was still a gnawing dilemma about whether or not to publish it. The marketing people were aghast at the possibility that wholesalers would refuse to distribute an issue of the magazine with such a blatantly blasphemous feature. Althea and | voted to publish. Gregory and editor Bruce David voted not to publish. “lI’ m against it,” he said, “because we're this is an issue that just simply will not be distributed.” HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015396

Faced with this crucial decision, Althea made her choice on the basis of pure whimsicality. She noticed a pair of pigeons on the window ledge. One of them was waddling toward the other. “All right,” she said, “if that dove walks over and pecks the other dove, then we w/// publish this.” The pigeon continued strutting along the window ledge, but it stopped short and didn’ t peck the other pigeon, so publication of “Jesus and the Adulteress” was postponed indefinitely. Of course, Dick Gregory continued to spread his diligent activism until he died. He was a loss to me, and to this country, and around the world, but his powerful inspiration remains. HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015397

The Missing Episode of Seinfeld [erry Seinfeld is onstage at a comedy club] Jerry: Did God look down at Adam and Eve one day and say, “Oops, | forgot something. Let there be erections.” So Adam got the first hard- on in history. But God forgot to say when. And that’ s why men don’ t always get an erection when they want one. Women don’ t know it, but sometimes men have to actually pray for a hard-on. “Please, God, |’ Il be sensitive to her needs, | promise, oh God, please, just make it hard...” [Cut to George Costanza, having dinner with his parents. There is no conversation, but George’ s father is smiling, then chortles out loud.] George: What! What! What’ s so funny? Is it because lI’ m becoming more like you every day? George’ s father: Should | tell’ im? I’ m gonna tell’ im. George’ s mother: No, don’ t tell’ im. It’ s private between you and me. It’ s none of his beeswax. George: C' mon, stop teasing me, | wanna know, whatever it is, | wanna know, so c’ mon, tell me. George’ s father: Okay, |’ m gonna tell ' im. |’ ve been taking Viagra, George, and it really works. Your mother and | have been making whoopee like it was going out of style. HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015398

George’ s mother: Yeah, but it’ s not me he gets excited over. It’ s only because of the Viagra. George’ s father: What difference does it make, George? Listen to this. The pills cost $10 each, but a friend of mine goes to Mexico and he gets me a whole bottle of fifty for $42. George: Gee, that’ s less than a buck a fuck, isn’ t it? George’ s mother: George! You must never say the F-word in this kitchen! /7o her husband] See, | told you, we never should’ ve told’ im. [Cut to Jerry’ s apartment. Kramer bursts through the door] Kramer: Jerry! Jerry! I’ m gonna be rich! | bought a bunch of shares in Pfizer when it was real low, and now they put Viagra on the market and all the doctors are getting writers’ cramp from writing prescriptions, and the stock is going up and up like it swallowed Viagra! Jerry, I’ m gonna be able to retire! Jerry: Retire from whaf? Kramer, you don’ t do anything now. Kramer: Yes, | do. | scheme. | spend a lot of time scheming, Jerry. But now I’ Il be able to finance my schemes. |’ m gonna be able to call my own bluff, every day! If that’ s not retirement, | don’ t know what is. HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015399

Jerry: Anyway, | might get this Stand-up Comedy Award tonight, and I' m_ trying to think of what to say that will sound completely spontaneous. So, Kramer, what’ s your current scheme? Kramer: Okay, | got this idea because of the insurance companies. Blue Cross will pay for six Viagra pills a month. Well, that’ s very arbitrary, isn’ tit? | mean | get six hard-ons in one day. Jerry: That’ s the national average, you know, six hard-ons a day. Kramer: Jerry, believe me, Kramer don’ t have “average” hard- ons. But here’ s my merchandising plan. It’ s for one-night stands—a combination package of Viagra and RU486, the morning-after pill. It’ sa natural for the unisex market. [Cut to the restaurant. Elaine and George are sitting at the table] Elaine: But, George, that’ s stealing. George: Yep. And from my own parents. Elaine: You have no scruples. How do you know your father isn’ t counting the number of times he “makes whoopee” with your mother? He’ Il rea/ize that you took some of his Viagra pills when he thinks he has nine more times to go but the bottle has only five pills left? George: You think he keeps a tally sheet? He’ II never even suspect. HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015400

Elaine You' re in denial again—but you have to give me a couple of pills. | would just /ove to put a Viagra into Jerry and Kramer’ s coffee. George: Oh, really? | thought you had scruples, Elaine. Dosing somebody is unethical, especially friends. Elaine: Oh, didn’ t | tell you? | had my scruples removed with laser surgery. George: Seriously, Elaine, what about all the s/de effects of Viagra? Flaine: Stop worrying, George. Hurry, let me just have two. Jerry and Kramer will be here any minute. [Cut to the Stand-up Comedy Award ceremonies. Jerry, Elaine George and Kramer have been sitting at a table, drinking coffee. Suddenly the table rises slightly.] Jerry: Kramer, stop that, what are you doing? George: Maybe he’ s holding a one-man séance. Kramer: | can’ t get it down! Jerry, | can’ t get it down! Elaine: Gosh, Kramer, you must have been thinking about sex, huh? Kramer: No, | was thinking about my business plan. That’ s the only thing that really arouses me. When I’ m with a babe, | just think about my latest scheme and | get aroused. But | always let the babe take the credit. HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015401

[Courtney Cox is emceeing the event. Now she’ s announcing the winner.] Courtney: And the Best Stand-up Comedy Award goes to .. . Jerry Seinfeld! [erry walks up to the stage. Courtney and Jerry embrace warmly. She gives him the statuette. As the audience applause subsides, the blood flow to the spongy tissue in Jerry’ s penis increases. He _ tries unsuccesstully to hide his erection with the statuette] Jerry: Thank you all so much. Well, as you can see, |' m very excited about receiving this reward. | feel all tingly. And | have a headache. I' ma little dizzy too. An erection is like a cop. When you want one, it’ s never there. But when the /ast thing in the world you want is a hard-on—a public hard-on—then boing! \' m busted, right here on stage, with a spotlight, in front of five hundred strangers. | feel like | have to vomit. I’ Il try to avoid the first few rows. And everything looks blue. Especially my testicles. Is there a groupie in the house? Well, I' m not actually a group. |s there a singly in the house? Who would like to get laid tonight? I’ Il point the way. So I’ ve become a human dowsing rod. Now | think I’ m gonna faint. But even while |’ m lying unconscious here on the stage //erry Is fainting], my penis will still be a stand-up... HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015402

HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015403

THE LATER YEARS HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015404

Are Rape Jokes Funny? Abortion was still illegal in 1970. At the time, as both an underground abortion referral service and a stand-up satirist, | faced an undefined paradox. | wouldn’ t allow victims to become the target of my humor, yet there was one particular routine | did that called fora “rape- in” of legislators’ wives in order to impregnate them so that they would then convince their husbands to decriminalize abortion.. But feminist friends objected. | resisted at first, because it was such a well-intentioned joke. And then | reconsidered. Even in a joke, why should women be assaulted because men made the laws? Legislators’ wives were the victims in that joke, but the legislators themselves were the oppressors, and their hypocrisy was really my target. But for me to stop doing that bit of comedy wasn't chickenshit censorship, it was empathetic editing. Now, more than four decades later, rape-joking triggered a widespread controversy when a woman who prefers to remain anonymous went to a comedy club, expecting to be entertained. She chose the Laugh Factory in Hollywood because Dane Cook was on the bill, but he was followed by Daniel Tosh, and she had never heard of him. HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015405

In an email to her 7umb/r blogger friend, she accused Tosh of saying that “rape jokes are always funny, how can a rape joke not be funny, rape jokes are hilarious.” She was so offended that she felt morally compelled to shout, “Actually, rape jokes are never funny!” Tosh paused and then seized the opportunity, responding, “Wouldn’ t it be funny if that girl got raped by like five guys? Like right now? What if a bunch of guys just raped her?” The audience laughed raucously. After all, isn’ t anyone who yells at a comedian practically asking to become an immediate target? But this woman was stunned and humiliated, and she left. In the lobby, she demanded to see the manager, who apologized profusely and gave her free tickets for another night--admitting, however, that she understood if this woman never wanted to return. In her email, she concluded that, “having to basically flee while Tosh was enthusing about how hilarious it would be if | was gang-raped in that small, claustrophobic room was pretty viscerally terrifying and threatening all the same, even if the actual scenario was unlikely to take place. The suggestion of it is violent enough and was meant to put me in HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015406

my place.” She added, “Please re-blog and spread the word.” And indeed, it went viral. Coincidentally, on the same night that Tosh, in his signature Sarcastic approach to reality, provoked the woman, Sarah Silverman was performing at Foxwords Casino, and she touched upon the same taboo subject: “We need more rape jokes. We really do. Needless to say, rape, the most heinous crime imaginable, seems it’ sacomic’ s dream, though. It' s because it seems when you do rape jokes, that the material is so dangerous and edgy, and the truth is, it’ s like the safest area to talk about in comedy‘ cause who’ s gonna complain about a rape joke? Rape victims? They don’ t even report rape. They’ re just traditionally not complainers.” Ironically, in 7he Aristocrats, a documentary entirely about a classic joke of the same name, Silverman complained (facetiously) that she was once raped by show-biz legend Joe Franklin. Also, her rape tips for men include, "Carry a rape whistle. If you find that you are about to rape someone, blow the whistle until someone comes to stop you." However, another joke of hers goes like this: “Il was raped by a doctor—which is so bittersweet for a Jewish girl.” HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015407

In the magazine Bitch ( “Feminist Response to Pop Culture” ), an article titled “Laughing It Off: What Happens When Women Tell Rape Jokes?” by Katherine Leyton stated: “Some female comics tell jokes that clearly target rape culture, such as one classic skit by veteran comedian Wanda Sykes, ‘Even as little girls we’ re taught we have something everybody wants—you gotta protect it, you gotta be careful, you gotta cherish it. That’ s alot of fucking pressure! | would like a break! You know what would make my life so much easier? Wouldn’ t it be wonderful if our pussies were detachable?’ The joke goes on to detail situations where you could leave your ‘detachable pussy’ at home, mainly to avoid the chance of rape.” In the fall of 1981, | booked myself for a cross-country tour, from New York to Chicago, Minneapolis, San Francisco and Los Angeles. While | was in New York, a nun was raped. When | got to Chicago, the rapist was also there. He had given himself up to the police. On stage | explained the true reason why: “He heard that the Mafia, in a rush of Christian compassion, put a $25,000 contract out on his life.” That part was true. “So now I'm asking the Mafia to use their clout to end the war in El Salvador since four nuns were raped and killed there.” They HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015408

must’ ve heard my request. By the time | got to Los Angeles, the Hera/d- Examiner was reporting that the Mafia was “probably the largest source of arms for the rebels in El Salvador.” In the spring of 1982, there was a Radical Humor Festival at New York University. That weekend, the festival sponsored an evening of radical comedy. The next day, my performance was analyzed by an unofficial women's caucus. Robin Tyler ( “Il am not a lesbian comic--l am a comic who is a lesbian” ) served as the spokesperson for their conclusions. What had caused a stir was my reference to the use of turkey basters by single mothers-to-be who were attempting to impregnate themselves by artificial insemination. Tyler explained to me, “You have to understand, some women still have a hang-up about penetration.” Well, | must have been suffering from Delayed Punchline Syndrome, because it wasn't until | was returning on a plane, contemplating the notion that freedom of absurdity transcends gender difference, that | finally did respond, in absentia: “Yeah, but you have to understand, some men still feel threatened by turkey basters.” kok # The Onion posted a story about a college dorm that was nicknamed “The Rape Hall.” And an /ronic Times headline stated, “Quaaludes Ends HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015409

Its Relationship With Bill Cosby.” Earlier in Amy Schumer’ s stand-up career, she told this joke: “I used to date Hispanic guys, but now | prefer consensual.” She has since been accused of racist comedy. “I used to do a lot of short dumb joke like that,” she responded.” | played a dumb white girl onstage. | am evolving as an artist. | am taking responsibility and hope | haven’ t hurt anyone. | apologize if | did.” Indeed, in an episode of /nside Amy Schumer on Comedy Central, a sketch--Football Town Nights parodying Friday Night Lights--featured a Texas town’ s new high school football coach. He informs his teenage squad that he’ s going to be doing things differently. There’ s going to be a no-huddle offense. Two-a-day practices are mandatory. And there will be no raping. “But we play football!,” one player cries. The rest of the team chimes in: “But we play football!” “What if she thinks it’ s rape, but! don’ t?” “What about at-away games?” “What if my mom is the DA and won’ t prosecute, can | rape?” The whole town bullies this coach for taking something away from the players that they obviously need. In another sketch, Schumer plays a flirtatious lawyer ironically defending Cosby by bedazzling the judge as well as the jury. In a one- woman show about rape, Asking For /t, responding to Daniel Tosh, award- winning British comic Adrienne Truscott performs with her bare vagina HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015410

uncovering a photo of Bill Cosby. And on Late Might Seth Myers rhetorically asks, "Why did Bill Cosby cross the road?” He answers himself, “To avoid a reporter who was asking about sexual assault allegations.” At the National Association of Television Program Executives conference, Jay Leno commented on the allegations against Bill Cosby: “I don't know why it's so hard to believe women. You to go Saudi Arabia and you need two women to testify against a man. Here you need twenty-five [now forty-five].” Leno also used one of Justin Bieber’ s song hits for a punchline, pointing out that Bieber “wouldn't want to sing '| Wanna Be Your ‘Boyfriend’ to guys in prison.” In a routine about political correctness, George Carlin suggested that a euphemism for a rape victim would be “unwilling sperm recipient.” On 7he View, Joy Behar exclaimed that she would vote for a rapist as long as he supported beloved feminist issues like abortion and the free contraception they bicker so much about. On 7he Daily Show, Jon Stewart aimed his arrow at presidential candidate Donald Trump (who bought 20,000 copies of 7he Art of the Deal, making it a bestseller). Stewart shouts, “There are probably some non-rapists caught up in that tide, whether they’ re unable to rape for medical reasons, or whether they’ re just all raped-out.” A clip shows HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015411

Trump reading out loud from a report that “80% of Central American women and girls are raped crossing into the United Sates.” CNN’ s Don Lemon tells Trump, “That’ s about women being raped, it’ s not about criminals coming across the border or entering the country.” Trump: ” Somebody’ s doing the raping, Don." “Touche!l,” said Stewart. “| believe we have our campaign slogan: Trump 2016--Somebody’ s Doing the Raping." Immediately after The Daily Show came The Nightly Showwith Larry Wilmore. He plays the same clip just a slightly bit longer: Trump spouting, ” Somebody’ s doing the raping, Don. | mean, you know, somebody’ s doing the rapiing, You think the women are being raped. Well, who’ s doing the raping?” Wilmore repeats: “Who’ s doing the raping? Okay, who’ s bringing the chips? Who’ s bringing the beer? Wait, wait. Who’ s doing the raping? Oh, okay, sorry about that. | didn’ t know, | had to ask. | have to tell you, though, as far as campaign slogans go: Donald Trump 2016--Who’ s Doing the Raping?” Hey, it sounds familiar already. And on Bill Maher’ s Rea/ Time the reactionary blond witch Ann Coulter defended Trump: “These aren’ t people we have to have here. We already have our own rapists and murderers. We don’ t need to be bringing in more rapists and murderers.” HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015412

Although Daniel Tosh is a consistently unapologetic performer for the sardonic material he exudes on his Comedy Central series--which features a running theme of rape jokes, even including one about his sister-- for this occasion he decided to go the Twitter route: “All the out of context misquotes aside, I’ d like to sincerely apologize.” He also tweeted, “The point | was making before | was heckled is there are awful things in the world but you can still make jokes about them.” According to Jamie Masada, owner of the Laugh Factory, Tosh asked the audience, “What you guys wanna talk about?” Someone called out “Rape,” and a woman in the audience started screaming, “No, rape is painful, don’ t talk about it.”. Then, says Masada, “Daniel came in, and he said, ‘Well, it sounds like she’ s been raped by five guys’ —something like that. | didn’ t hear properly. It was a comment—it wasn’ t a joke at the expense of this girl.” Masada claims that she sat through the rest of Tosh’ s performance, which received a standing ovation, before she complained to the manager. Fellow comedians defended Tosh with their own tweets. Dane Cook: “If you journey through this life easily offended by other peoples words | think it’ s best for everyone if you just kill yourself.” Doug Stanhope: HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015413

“You’ re hilarious. If you ever apologize to a heckler again | will rape you.” Louis C.K.: “Your show makes me laugh every time | watch it. And you have pretty eyes” --except that he wrote it after watching Tosh on TV, but before he learned about the Laugh Factory incident. Nevertheless, he was excoriated and accused of being a “rape apologist.” But C.K. himself is no stranger to sexual-assault jokes. Onstage, he has said that he’ s against rape-- “unless you have a reason, like you wanna fuck someone and they won’ t let you, in which case what other option do you have?” Conversely, in an episode of his TV series, Lou/e, he reversed such roles. After leaving a bar with an especially aggressive woman, Laurie (played by Melissa Leo), that he had inadvertently met earlier, she performs fellatio on him in her pickup truck, then insists that he in turn perform cunnilingus on her. And he refuses. So, she attacks him physically with unabashed viciousness, mounts him, and he gives in to her demand. In other words, Laurie rapes Louie. No joke. To watch this scene was positively jaw-dropping. It served as a reminder of how often comedians--and their jaded audiences--find prison-rape jokes not only to be funny, but also, as in the case of pedophile Jerry Sandusky, an act of delayed justice resulting in laughter that morphs into applause. A VY. Post headline about pedophile Subway pitchman: “Enjoy a foot long in jail.” HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015414

And “Don’ t drop the soap” even made its way to the animated Family Guy. Meanwhile, reacting to the Tosh tirade, Julie Burton, president of the Women’ s Media Center, stated: “If free speech permits a comedian to suggest a woman in his audience should be gang-raped, then it certainly permits us to object, and to ask what message this sends to survivors or to perpetuators. Tosh’ s comment was just one extreme example of pop culture’ s dismissive treatment of sexualized violence, which desensitizes audiences to enormous human suffering. Internet outcry is encouraging, but popular media needs to push back too.” And the original blogger posted another message: “My friend and | wanted to thank everyone for there /s/c/ support and for getting this story out there. We just wanted everyone to know what Daniel Tosh had done and if you didn’ t agree then to stop following him. My friend is surprised to have gotten any form of an apology and doesn’ t wish to press any further charges against [him].” What? Press charges? Rape is a crime. Rape jokes aren’ t. They are the risk of free speech. The blog concluded, “She does plan on returning to comedy shows in the future, but to see comedians that she’ s seen before or to at least look up artists before going to their shows.” HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015415

Wait till she finds out that Dane Cook suggested she kill herself. kok & Now, over forty years since | stopped presenting my concept about a rape-in of legislators’ wives, | sent the first draft of this piece around to several friends, and | was particularly touched by a response from Emma Cofod, production manager at my then-publisher, Soft Skull Press: “Thank you for sharing this! | truly appreciate your thoughts here. | read about this woman's complaint last week, and the whole event turned my stomach. What Tosh did was personally threatening, which is not OK. But even though! fall neatly into the feminist camp, | think your original joke is hilarious—within context, and coming from a comedian whose philosophy | identify with. Color me conflicted.” | think that kind of conflict is healthy. And then there was Louis C.K.’ s appearance on Jhe Daily Show. This is what he told Jon Stewart between interruptions: “If this [controversy about Tosh] is like a fight between comedians and bloggers--hyperbole and garbage comes out of those two places, just uneducated, unfettered--it’ s also a fight between comedians and feminists, because they’ re natural enemies, because, stereotypically speaking, feminists can’ t take a joke, and on the other side, comedians HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015416

can’ t take criticism. Comedians are big pussies. So to one side you say, ‘If you don’ t like a joke, stay out of the comedy clubs.’ To the other side you say, ‘If you don’ t like criticism, stop Googling yourself every ten seconds, because nobody’ s making you read it.’ It’ s positive. To me, all dialogue is positive. | think you should listen. “If somebody has the opposite feeling from me, | wanna /earit so | can add to mine. | don’ t wanna obliterate theirs with mine, that’ s how | feel. Now, a lot of people don’ t feel that way. For me, any joke about anything bad is great, that’ s how /feel. Any joke about rape, a Holocaust, the Mets--aarrgghh, whatever--any joke about something bad is a positive thing. But now I’ ve read some blogs during this whole [controversy] that made me enlightened at things | didn’ t know. This woman said how rape is something that polices women’ s lives, they have a narrow corridor, they can’ t go out late, they can’ t go to certain neighborhoods, they can’ t dress a certain way, because they might--| never—-that’ s part of me now that wasn’ t before, and | can still enjoy the rape jokes. “But this is also about men and women, because a lot of people are trading blogs with each other, couples are fighting about Daniel Tosh and rape jokes--that’ s what I' ve been reading in blogs--but they’ re both making a classic gender mistake, because the women are saying, ‘Here’ s HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015417

how | fee/about this,’ but they’ re also saying, ‘My feelings should be everyone’ s primary concern.’ Now the men are making this mistake, they’ re saying, ‘Your feelings don’ t matter, your feelings are wrong and your feelings are stupid.’ If you’ ve ever lived with a woman, you can’ t step in shit worse than that, than to tell a woman that her feelings don’ t matter. So, to the men! say, ‘Listen to what the women are saying about this.’ To the women | say, “Now that we heard you, shut the fuck up for a minute, and let’ s all get back together and kill the Jews.’ That’ s all | have to say about it.” The audience laughed and applauded, as they did fifty years ago when Lenny Bruce ended a riff on prejudice: “Randy, it won’ t matter any more even if you are colored and I’ m Jewish, and even if Fritz is Japanese, and Wong is Greek, because then we’ re all gonna stick together—and beat up the Polacks.” My notion of a rape-in of legislators’ wives in order to impregnate them was no more meant to be taken literally than Louis C.K.’ s killing the Jews or Lenny’ s beating up the Polacks. Rape-in was a misunderstood metaphor; a pro-choice parable that unfortunately has become timely again, but now my target has been clarified, though it's still those increasingly incredible sexist legislators. HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015418

Words and Phrases That I’ ve Coined | really don’ t like to boast, but in my lifetime, on half a dozen occasions, | have actually added words and phrases to the language. It’ s something | always wanted to do. What a thrill it must have been for Dr. Harold Cerumen, who decided that cleaning out earwax should be known as “cerumen disimpaction.” And veterinarian Alice Neuticle who coined the word “neuticles” —cosmetic testicles for a dog that’ s been neutered. So I’ m not asking for credit. Or cash. Since money had been called “dough” and then morphed into “bread,” | figured that “toast” would be the next logical step in that particular linguistic evolution, but my campaign itself became toast, in the sense that “toast” now means history. Also, | was intrigued by the process of having a body part named after oneself. How proud Casper Bartholin’ s parents must have been to have a son who christened the source of female lubrication that takes the friction out of intercourse as “Bartholin’ s glands.” But my idea of calling those two vertical lines between your nose and your mouth “Krassner’ s crease” just never became popular. HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015419

Here, then, for better or worse, are my contributions to American culture that did manage to catch on, or at least may be on their way. 1. In 1958, pornography was gradually becoming legal, but at that stage of the game, the Supreme Court was unwilling to allow 1st Amendment protection of “hard-core” porn—as opposed, | assumed, to the term | invented, “soft-core porn,” which was obviously more respectable, though it seemed kind of sneaky, pretending to be squeaky clean. So | decided to satirize the concept with a new feature in 7he Realist: “Soft-Core Porn of the Month.” For example, phallic symbolism in newspapers and magazines was a key ingredient of soft-core porn. Sample: A close-up of a stickshift in a 1965 Volkswagen ad was accompanied by the question, “Does the stickshift scare your wife?” Soft-core porn now refers to limited sexuality, as seen in network TV dramas and hotel-room movies that feature jiggling breasts and buttocks but no genitalia. The way to recognize soft-core porn is that it gives men a soft-on. 2. On the afternoon of December 31, 1967, several activist friends were gathered at Abbie and Anita Hoffman's Lower East Side apartment, smoking Columbian marijuana and planning a counter-convention for the Democratic Party’ s event the following summer in Chicago. Our fantasy HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015420

was to counter their convention of death with our festival of life. While the Democrats would present politicians giving speeches at the convention center, we would present rock bands playing in the park. There would be booths with information about drugs and alternatives to the draft. Our mere presence would be our statement. We needed a name, so that reporters could have a who for their journalistic =who-what-when-where-and-why lead paragraphs.! felt a brainstorm coming on and went from the living room to the bedroom so that | could concentrate. Our working title was the International Youth Festival. But the initials lYF were a meaningless acronym. | paced back and forth, juggling titles to see if | could come up with words whose initials would make a good acronym.| tried Youth International Festival. YIF. It sounded like KIF. Kids International Festival? Nope, too contrived. Back to YIF. But what could make YIP? Now that would be ideal because then the word Yippie could be derived organically. Of course, “Yippie” was already a traditional shout of spontaneous joy, but we could be the Yippies! It had exactly the right attitude. Yippies was the most appropriate name to signify the radicalization of hippies. What a perfect media myth that would be—the Yippies! And then, working backward, it hit me. Youth International Party! It was a natural. Youth: This HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015421

was essentially a movement of young people involved in a generational struggle. /nternational: |t was happening all over the globe, from Mexico to France, from Germany to Japan. And Party: In both senses of the word. We would 6ea party and we would Aavea party. Yippie was only a label to describe a phenomenon that already existed--an organic coalition of psychedelic dropouts and _ political activists. There was no separation between our culture and our politics. In the process of cross-pollination, we had come to share an awareness that there was a linear connection between putting kids in prison for smoking marijuana in this country and burning them to death with napalm on the other side of the planet. It was just the ultimate extension of dehumanization. But now reporters had a who for their lead paragraphs. A headline in the Chicago Daily News summed it up: “Yipes! The Yippies Are Coming!" Our myth was becoming a reality. 3. In 1972, | found myself smoking a combination of marijuana and opium with John Lennon and Yoko Ono. Lennon was absentmindedly holding on to the joint, and | asked him, “Do the British use that expression, ‘Don’ t bogart that joint,’ or is it only an American term--you know, derived from the image of a cigarette dangling from Humphrey Bogart's lip?” He replied, with a twinkle in his eye, “In England, if you HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015422

remind somebody else to pass a joint, you lose your own turn.” Since Bogart and Lauren Bacall were a classic Hollywood couple, | was inspired by that snippet of dialogue to say, “Don’ t baca//that joint.” 4. Intuitively, | was an advocate of equal rights and opportunities for both genders long before Women’ s Liberation became a movement. In 1959, | wrote, “From a completely idealistic viewpoint, classified ads for jobs should not have separate Male and Female classifications, with exceptions such as a _ wet-nurse.” In 1964, that practice became illegal. Masturbation was a powerful taboo for females, a subdivision of the war on pleasure, while it was somehow expected of males. But if it was okay for guys to jack-off, | wrote in a media fable, 7a/es of Tongue Fu, in 1974, then it was also okay for girls to jill-off. 5. In 1979, | covered for a weekly alternative paper the trial of ex-cop Dan White for the double execution of San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk, the gay equivalent of Martin Luther King. In a surprise move, homophobic White’ s defense team presented a bio-chemical explanation of his behavior, blaming it on compulsive gobbling down of sugar-filled junk-food snacks. This was a_ purely accidental tactic. Dale Metcalf, an attorney, told me how he happened to be playing chess with one of White’ s attorneys, Steven Scherr. HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015423

Metcalf had just read Orthomol/ecular Nutrition by Abram Hoffer. He questioned Scherr about White’ s diet and learned that, while under stress, White would consume candy bars and soft drinks. Metcalf recommended the book to Scherr, suggesting the author as an expert witness. In his book, Hoffer revealed a personal vendetta against doughnuts, and White had once eaten five doughnuts in a row. During the trial, psychiatrist Martin Blinder testified that, on the night before the murders, while White was “getting depressed about the fact he would not be reappointed [as supervisor, after having quit], he just sat there in front of the TV set, bingeing on Twinkies.” In my notebook, | scribbled “Twinkie defense,” and wrote about it in my next report. In the wake of the Twinkie defense, a representative of the Continental Baking Company asserted that the notion that overdosing on the cream-filled goodies could lead to murderous behavior was “poppycock” and “crap” —apparently two of the artificial ingredients in Twinkies, along with sodium pyrophosphate and yellow dye—while another spokesperson couldn’ t believe “that a rational jury paid serious attention to that issue.” Nevertheless, some jurors did. One remarked after the trial that “It sounded like Dan White had hypoglycemia.” Later, the San Francisco Chronicle reported: “During the trial, no HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015424

one but well-known satirist Paul Krassner—who may have coined the phrase ‘Twinkie defense’'—played up that angle. His trial stories appeared in the San Francisco Bay Guardian.” 6. Twitter is an interesting phenomenon. It’ s perfect for those folks with a short attention span, and it’ s scary for paranoids who don’ t want to be followed. It appeals to minimalists, such as, say, Bob Dylan. | once asked him, “How come you’ re taking Hebrew lessons?” He replied, “1 can’ t speak it.” And when | mentioned the Holocaust, he responded, “I resented it.” Tweets range from the trivial (David Gregory announcing that he was going to eat a bagel before moderating Meet the Press) to international conflicts (Iranian citizens reporting on the uprising against their repressive government). It occurred to me that there could be classic haiku tweets—three lines consisting of 5 syllables, 7 syllables and 5 syllables—adding up obviously to no more than 140 characters—and so | decided to embed the phrase | coined in the following (also) twaiku: What's worth sharing now? World War Three or stubbed my toe? | have Twitter’ s Block. HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015425

My Brother’ s Secret Space Communication Projects When my brother George and | were kids, | could recite the alphabet backwards, whereas he read the entire dictionary. We both played the violin, and when he was nine and | was six, we performed at Carnegie Hall. (| was the youngest concert artist in any field to perform there.) Our younger sister Marge took piano lessons and became a legendary figure at Boys and Girls High School in Brooklyn, teaching music and running the chorus. Now retired, she and two women--one plays the cello, the other a flute—recently performed at the Salvador Dali Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida, playing music connected to various phases of Dali’ s life. (She also teaches Tai Chi.) Marge was the only one in our family who stuck with classical music. Although | was considered a child prodigy, | merely had a technique for playing the violin, but | had a real passion for making people laugh. | put my violin in the closet when | was twelve, and several years later | used it essentially as a prop when | began performing stand-up comedy. George went to the High School of Music & Art, and was offered a four-year scholarship at the Juilliard School’ s renowned Music Division, but he HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015426

really preferred Math and Science. He surprised our parents, announcing his decision to be an electrical engineer, but they were supportive. He turned down the scholarship and instead attended CCNY. “Because,” he says, “I thought then that the violin was good for my avocation, not my vocation. With so many brilliant musicians then, you really had to know somebody to get anywhere in that world. It’ s not like YouTube today.” While at CCNY, he played with a square dance group and became Official Fiddler for the New York/New Jersey Square Dance Callers Association. He learned that a caller earned twice as much as he did, so he put down his fiddle and took up calling square dances. He was also captain of the varsity boxing team. George went to the University of Michigan for his Master’ s Degree. Our mother insisted—-and to please her-—he mailed his laundry home in a light aluminum case she had purchased for that specific purpose. To pay for his tuition, basement apartment and other expenses, he got a teaching fellowship, was a research assistant, sold programs at football games, and bussed tables at a local restaurant, which he quit when the table he cleared was occupied by fellow students. He won the all-campus boxing championship, but had to fight in a heavier weight class since no one else weighed as little as he did. “Being a HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015427

violinist,” he said, “Il was worried about my hands. But my opponent in the semi-final match was an oboe player with a concert scheduled for the next day, and he asked me to take it easy on his mouth.” kok * In October 1957, Russia sent Sputnik into space. It was the first orbiting satellite, circling the earth in 96 minutes, and making 1,440 orbits in three months. This astounding technical feat was totally unanticipated by the United States and ignited the era of the space race. At the time, George was working as a civilian scientist for the Army Signal Corps in Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, in charge of the radio relay program. He had been recruited by their senior executive of Research & Development, an alumnus of the University of Michigan. A week after Sputnik, George sent a proposal to the Commanding General, urging a space communication program. The response: Do /t/ "So," George recalls, “I created the first Space Electronics organization in the country. It was very strange making presentations to generals and top government officials. At age twenty-nine, as head of the Astro- Electronics Division, | had the civilian rank equal to a colonel, but | looked like a young kid. It was embarrassing to take them to lunch and be carded by the waiter.” HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015428

That wasn’ t his only embarrassment: “At the Signal Corps, | accidentally flushed my top secret badge down the toilet. It took a lot of official paperwork and the notation ‘irretrievably lost’ to finally get a new badge. Also, in 1954, the McCarthy paranoia was paramount. |, and fellow civilians--and military personnel, | assume--had to empty our lunchboxes and briefcases for inspection every time we entered the building.” Five months after he had begun as a civilian scientist, George was drafted. In the army, he was assigned to the 82" Airborne Division at Fort Bragg in North Carolina. He was a “leg,” though. Instead of jumping out of an airplane, his job was to maintain all radios, phones and electrical equipment. He also started the U.S. Helicopter Square Dance Team to demonstrate the mobility of helicopters. When assigned KP (Kitchen Police), rather than peel potatoes, he scheduled helicopter square dance practice. Eight months after Sputnik, his team began working on the design of the world’ s_ first communication _ satellite, SCORE (Signal Communications Orbit Relay Equipment). “There were no reference books, precedents, or Google for information. We were the pioneers. It’ s HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015429

interesting that the first known reference to communication satellites was in a 1945 science-fiction story by the British author, Arthur C. Clarke.” It took the team only six months to design and build the satellite, which was launched in December 1958 by an Atlas rocket that weighed 9,000 pounds. “The satellite payload became famous for the tape- recorded message from President Dwight Eisenhower, who insisted that this project remain top secret,” George tells me. “He said the launch would be aborted if any word leaked out, because he didn’ t want a chance of failure to tarnish our image. As it turned out, one of the two tape recorders did fail, but his Christmas message to the world was the very first transmitted message from space.” Eisenhower stated: “This is the president of the United States speaking. Through the marvels of scientific advance, my voice is coming to you via a Satellite circling in outer space. My message is a simple one. Through this unique means, | convey to you and all mankind America’ s wish for peace on earth and good will toward men everywhere.” koe OF In 1945, in the wake of World War Il, the victors launched Operation Paperclip, recruiting a variety of six hundred scientists from Nazi Germany to work in the United States. President Harry Truman ordered the HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015430

exclusion of any “member of the Nazi Party or an active supporter of Nazi militarism,” but the Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency created false employment and political biographies to circumvent Truman’ s command. Those scientists were then granted security clearance and infiltrated into hospitals, universities, and the aerospace industry, further developing their techniques in propaganda, mind control, and behavior modification. Among them was Wernher von Braun, who had been a member of the Nazi Party and an SS officer who could be linked to the deaths of thousands of concentration camp prisoners. (Fun fact: He married his cousin.) He came to America in 1945 and became a citizen in 1955. He was called the “Father of the U.S. space program.” In June 1958, by the time those German importees had become entrenched in a slew of American niche communities, | published the first issue of 7he Realist, including a cartoon that depicted the U.S. Army Guided Missile Research Center with a sign in the window, He/p Wanted. A couple of scientists are standing in front of that building, and one is saying to the other, “They would have hired me only | don't speak German.” Exactly one year later, Wernher von Braun recruited thirteen scientists to work with him on an_ ultra-top-secret program, Project Horizon, to build a communication station on the moon. Its purpose was a HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_015431