#paul krassner – @protoslacker on Tumblr

Paul Krassner … in 1963 created a miracle of compressed intelligence nearly as admirable for potent simplicity, in my opinion, as Einstein’s e=mc2. With the Vietnam War going on, and with its critics discounted and scorned by the government and the mass media, Krassner put on sale a red, white and blue poster that said FUCK COMMUNISM. At the beginning of the 1960s, FUCK was believed to be so full of bad magic as to be unprintable. COMMUNISM was to millions the name of the most loathsome evil imaginable. To call an American a communist was like calling somebody a Jew in Nazi Germany. By having FUCK and COMMUNISM fight it out in a single sentence, Krassner wasn’t merely being funny as heck. He was demonstrating how preposterous it was for so many people to be responding to both words with such cockamamie Pavlovian fear and alarm.

Kurt Vonnegut quoted in a post by Jason Schafer in Dangerous Minds. Cagnitive Dissonance: Paul Krassner's 'Fuck Communism' Banner, 1963.

The last few weeks at work I've done little else at work other than load bags of mulch into people's vehicles. An awful lot of guys my age are dicks. Some of them have 'Fuck Biden" bumper stickers on their Yank tanks. I've known for a long time sayiing that I'm an old hippie doesn't mean what I think it means. A whole lot of people really hate hippies. And the Biden bumper sticker and Krassner's banner gets to a part of what people think they don't tlike about hippies.

"Fuck Biden' isn't funny today because the F-word simply doesn't have the same "bad magic." I do suspect that people sporting the sticker sense of specter of humor, Lenny Bruce or George Carlin's 'Seven Words'. But nobody finds 'Fuck Biden' funny, it's merely mean and crass. It's the cruelty that titilates.

I do sometimes visit The Realist Archive. I don't know what people today will make of it.

#paul krassner #john francis putnam #the realist #satire #words #yippies

protoslacker

My advice for the future is to always remember that the political system is merely a buffer between the status quo and the force of evolution. And, whenever you eat a club sandwich, always take the toothpick out before you bite into it.

Paul Krassner interviewed by Adam Elenbass in Reality Sandwich. Getting Real with Paul Krassner (eleven years ago)

#paul krassner #RIP #the realist

protoslacker

THE REALIST ARCHIVE PROJECT

All issues now available. A complete and unexpurgated republishing of all 146 issues (including supplements and related ephemera) of Paul Krassner's The Realist.

ep.tc

The Realist Archive began in June 2007 with the goal to put every issue of The Realist online and freely accessible to anyone. The one large problem was only 1/3 of the run could be found available anywhere (well available in some places, but at the asking price of a large truck ... Krassner himself didn't have many of the older issues). And an even larger problem being many of the existing issues were (and are) crumbling away and required extensive digital restoration; many issues were destroyed in the act of scanning brittle newsprint itself. But that was part of the project, and every page of The Realist is now viewable - including even the subscriber-only sheets.

#paul krassner #the realist #satire #politics

protoslacker

Paul Krassner, 1932-2019: American Satirist

www.counterpunch.org

“My slogan for The Realist used to be ‘Irreverence is our only sacred cow,’ but I’ve had second thoughts. Irreverence has become an industry and can become irreverence for its own sake. Mean-spirited stereotypes in the guise of satire.”

#paul krassner #RIP #satire #free speech

protoslacker

At its height, psychedelic sex encompassed posters, tabloids, comics, and newsstand magazines, but the most far-out examples of all were the glossy magazines from California, center of both hippie culture and the budding American porn industry.

Juxtapoz Magazine. NEW BOOK: PSYCHEDELIC SEX

Psychedelic Sex Eric Godtland, Paul Krassner, Dian Hanson

#book #sex #paul krassner #nsfw