Who's to Say What's Obscene?: Politics, Culture, and Comedy in America Today [Paperback]

Paul Krassner (Author), Arianna Huffington (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 1, 2009

“Krassner is absolutely compelling. He has lived on the edge so long he gets his mail delivered there.”—San Francisco Chronicle

In this collection of irreverent and satirical essays, counterculture icon Paul Krassner explores the moral obscenity of contemporary politics and culture—from censorship of cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed to lessons learned from his mentor, Lenny Bruce.

Paul Krassner is the founding editor of The Realist. He currently writes for High Times, Adult Video News, The Huffington Post, and CounterPunch.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Krassner (Confessions of a Raving Unconfined Nut), publisher of the Realist magazine, ruminates on American social and political hypocrisy in these essays that drift between current events and the heyday of the 1960s counterculture when the author dropped acid with the Merry Pranksters and palled around with Abbie Hoffman. Krassner weighs in on the last election cycle, the decriminalization of marijuana, and racism, with a stated (and largely achieved) goal of illuminating the gulf between what society says and what it does. The essays focus mostly on other humorists, and while he points out that today sarcasm passes for irony, he's far from a curmudgeon and praises such current comics as Sacha Baron Cohen and Sarah Silverman. Krassner says, It doesn't have to get a belly laugh, it just has to be valid criticism, which is the classic definition of satire, and while this book lingers too long on nostalgic remembrances and tackles serious issues too directly to get constant laughs, it makes a convincing case for the importance—and political necessity—of irreverence. (Aug.)
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Review

"Krassner (Confessions of a Raving Unconfined Nut), publisher of the Realist magazine, ruminates on American social and political hypocrisy in these essays that drift between current events and the heyday of the 1960s counterculture when the author dropped acid with the Merry Pranksters and palled around with Abbie Hoffman. Krassner weighs in on the last election cycle, the decriminalization of marijuana, and racism, with a stated (and largely achieved) goal of illuminating the gulf between what society says and what it does." --Publishers Weekly

"Krassner (Confessions of a Raving Unconfined Nut), publisher of the Realist magazine, ruminates on American social and political hypocrisy in these essays that drift between current events and the heyday of the 1960s counterculture when the author dropped acid with the Merry Pranksters and palled around with Abbie Hoffman. Krassner weighs in on the last election cycle, the decriminalization of marijuana, and racism, with a stated (and largely achieved) goal of illuminating the gulf between what society says and what it does. The essays focus mostly on other humorists, and while he points out that today 'sarcasm passes for irony,' he's far from a curmudgeon and praises such current comics as Sacha Baron Cohen and Sarah Silverman. Krassner says, 'It doesn't have to get a belly laugh, it just has to be valid criticism, which is the classic definition of satire,' and while this book lingers too long on nostalgic remembrances and tackles serious issues too directly to get constant laughs, it makes a convincing case for the importance--and political necessity--of irreverence." - Publisher's Weekly --Publisher's Weekly

"All of the essays in Krassner's new book have been published before--in High Times, The Huffington Post, The Nation and The L.A. Weekly--but they all read as though they were written yesterday. That's because Krassner is always shocking, always provocative and for all his shenanigans, amazingly serious about the pornography of power and the obscenity of war (as well as Somali pirates and piracy on the web)." --Jonah Raskin, The Bohemian

Krassner lives in a world where Truth and Satire are swingers, changing partners so often you never know who belongs with whom. His latest collection of entertaining essays, which originally appeared in publications as diverse as High Times, The Nation, Adult Video NewsOnline and the Huffington Post (Arianna Huffington wrote the introduction), covers comedy, the drug war, the counterculture, dead icons and freedom. Don't miss the parts they left out of the Borat movie, the short history of racism in standup and the discussion of whether Moses might have been tripping when he parted the Red Sea. --The Playboy Nightstand

"For readers unfamiliar with Krassner, his credentials--author, journalist, editor, talk show guest--seem fairly safe. But combine those with his role as a co-founder of the Yippie movement, his membership in Ken Kesey's Merry Pranksters, and his X-rated standup comedy routine and those initial credentials sound downright dangerous. Krassner is a satirist and he uses that skill here with his irreverent takes on the hypocrisies and absurdities in politics, comedy, and other aspects of American life. Offensive or funny? It's a matter of taste." --Book News

"[Krassner] uses the concept of 'obscenity' as a moral framing device to drive a series of free-form observations on war, drugs, sex, entertainment culture and connections between the past and the present. Krassner is not only concerned with identifying what is not obscene (in his view, pretty much anything to do with sex); he crafts a definition that instead encompasses greed, dishonesty, cruelty and murder. . . . Throughout the book Krassner retains the affect of a hip elder statesman with a perpetual twinkle in his eye, reminding his readers that politics without humor is boring and that laughter without a moral compass is lame." --Danny Goldberg, The Nation

"Krassner very blatantly points out how, through a carefully staged smoke and mirror routine, our priorities are being manipulated by politicians, media, and the filthy rich. . . . Ignore anything that is actually newsworthy and focus on Bono dropping the F bomb on TV or Janet Jackson's nip slip during the super bowl. What is truly obscene: all content that we enjoy as entertainment being controlled by a very small group of wealthy businessmen, or Tommy Chong selling a few bongs over state lines?" --Ben Trentelman, Salt Lake Underground

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: City Lights Publishers (July 1, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0872865010
• ISBN-13: 978-0872865013
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.2 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,031,580 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Paul Krassner's latest collection, "Who's to Say What's Obscene: Politics, Culture & Comedy in America Today" (foreword by Arianna Huffington), and other books by him, plus the Disneyland Memorial Orgy poster, are available at his website, paulkrassner.com.

He calls himself an investigative satirist. Don Imus labeled him "one of the comic geniuses of the 20th century." (Imus has since apologized for that quote.) And, according to the Los Angeles Reader, "Krassner delivers 90 minutes of the funniest, most intelligent social and political commentary in town."

On the other hand, a couple of FBI agents went to one of his performances and stated in their report, "He purported to be humorous about government policies." His FBI files indicate that after Life magazine published a favorable profile of him, the FBI sent a poison-pen letter to the editor, complaining: "To classify Krassner as a social rebel is far too cute. He's a nut, a raving, unconfined nut."

"The FBI was right," says George Carlin. "This man is dangerous--and funny; and necessary."

ABC newscaster Harry Reasoner wrote in his memoirs, "Krassner not only attacks establishment values; he attacks decency in general." So Krassner named his one-person show Attacking Decency in General, receiving awards from the L.A. Weekly and DramaLogue. He is the only person in the world ever to win awards from both Playboy (for satire) and the Feminist Party Media Workshop (for journalism). When People magazine called Krassner "Father of the underground press," he immediately demanded a paternity test. Actually, he had published The Realist magazine from 1958 to 1974. He reincarnated it as a newsletter in 1985. "The taboos may have changed," he wrote, "but irreverence is still our only sacred cow." The final issue was published in Spring 2001.

His style of personal journalism constantly blurred the line between observer and participant. He interviewed a doctor who performed abortions when it was illegal; Krassner then ran an underground abortion referral service. He covered the antiwar movement; then co-founded the Yippies with Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin (writing a few animated re-enactment scenes for the documentary "Chicago 10" four decades later). He published material on the psychedelic revolution; then took LSD with Tim Leary, Ram Dass and Ken Kesey, later accompanying Groucho Marx on his first acid trip.

He edited Lenny Bruce's autobiography, How to Talk Dirty and Influence People, and with Lenny's encouragement, became a stand-up comic himself, opening at the Village Gate in New York in 1961. Ten years later--five years after Lenny's death--Groucho said, "I predict that in time Paul Krassner will wind up as the only live Lenny Bruce." He was nominated for a 2005 Grammy Award in the Album Notes category for his 5,000-word essay accompanying a 6-CD package, Lenny Bruce: Let the Buyer Beware. Krassner rarely works the comedy-club circuit, preferring to perform on campuses, at theaters and in art galleries.

He has been a guest on Late Night with Conan O'Brien and Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher; on Air America Radio with Janeane Garofalo and with Marc Maron. He hosted his own radio call-in show in San Francisco.

Paul writes columns for High Times, AVN, CarnalNation.com, and is an occasional contributor to the Huffington Post. His articles have appeared in Rolling Stone, Spin, Playboy, Penthouse, Mother Jones, the Nation, New York, National Lampoon, Utne Reader, the Village Voice, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Los Angeles Times, the L.A. Weekly, New York Press, and Funny Times.

His venues have ranged from the New Age Expo to the Skeptics Conference, from a Neo-Pagan Festival to the L.A. County Bar Association, from a Swingers Convention to the Brentwood Bakery, where members of the audience were each given a free pastry of their choice. Over the years, he has built up a cult following that has steadily been edging into mainstream awareness.

His reviews have been highly complimentary. The New York Times: "He is an expert at ferreting out hypocrisy and absurdism from the more solemn crannies of American culture." The Los Angeles Times: "He has the uncanny ability to alter your perceptions permanently." The San Francisco Examiner: "Krassner is absolutely compelling. He has lived on the edge so long he gets his mail delivered there."

He was head writer for an HBO special satirizing the 1980 presidential election campaign, did on-air commentary for the Fox network's Wilton-North Report, and a decade later was a writer on Ron Reagan's late-night TV talk show.

Mercury Records released his first two comedy albums, We Have Ways of Making You Laugh and Brain Damage Control. Artemis Records released his next four: Sex, Drugs and the Antichrist: Paul Krassner at MIT, Campaign in the [Buttocks; change from A-s required by Amazon] , Irony Lives! and The Zen Bastard Rides Again.

His autobiography, Confessions of a Raving, Unconfined Nut: Misadventures in the Counter-Culture, published by Simon & Schuster, sold 30,000 copies. New World Digital is publishing an online, expanded edition.

His other books include: The Winner of the Slow Bicycle Race: The Satirical Writings of Paul Krassner, with an introduction by Kurt Vonnegut; a trilogy of anthologies--Pot Stories For the Soul, with an introduction by Harlan Ellison, Psychedelic Trips For the Mind and Magic Mushrooms and Other Highs: From Toad Slime to Ecstasy--Sex, Drugs and the Twinkie Murders: 40 Years of Countercultural Journalism; Impolite Interviews; Murder At the Conspiracy Convention and Other American Absurdities, with an introduction by George Carlin; and One Hand Jerking: Reports From an Investigative Satirist, with a foreword by Harry Shearer and an introduction by Lewis Black.

At the 14th annual Cannabis Cup in Amsterdam, Paul Krassner was inducted into the Counterculture Hall of Fame--"my ambition," he claims, "since I was three years old." In May 2004, he received an ACLU Uppie (Upton Sinclair) Award for dedication to freedom of expression.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars We Have Ways of Making You Read This Book, December 31, 2009

By 

Lee Quarnstrom (La Habra CA 90631) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Who's to Say What's Obscene?: Politics, Culture, and Comedy in America Today (Paperback)

Many of us who are of a certain age and possess a certain clear-eyed, skeptical view of things such as politics and politicians, sex and prudery, drugs and prohibition, etc., can trace our leery (and Leary) outlooks on life back to The Realist -- the eye-opening journal of political satire published by counter-culture hero Paul Krassner, the John Peter Zenger of what came to be called "underground: or "alternative" journalism. I was lucky enough to begin reading The Realist in the late 1950s or early '60s and luckier still to meet Krassner when I was aboard Ken Kesey's bus as one of his Merry Band of Pranksters. Many, many others my age and many of younger people have been privileged to read Krassner's writings in magazines such as High Times or in The Realist itself, which is now defunct but available on-line if you know the right people! Many others have caught Krassner's stand-up comedy and social commentary routines at clubs and on campuses around the country. Now, for those old-timers like me hankering for an updated dose of Krassner's level-headed commentary, "Who's to Say What's Obscene? Politics, Culture and Comedy in America Today" is available. It is a delightful compendium of Krassner's observations humorous and serious, and is something old fans should clamor for and newcomers should read so they can join the rest of us who've gotten help seeing America through his clear and impish eyes. What does Paul Krassner think is obscene? Well, folks, it's NOT Hustler magazine!

--Lee Quarnstrom, retired journalist, semi-retired Merry Prankster

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Book by a Remarkable Man, July 18, 2009

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A. Ross - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Who's to Say What's Obscene?: Politics, Culture, and Comedy in America Today (Paperback)

Paul Krassner is one of the great iconic figures of the 1960's Counterculture. He was the creator of The Realist, probably the first underground newspaper. It was hysterically funny, totally irreverent, often vulgar, and always inspired.

These recent essays include contemporary humor, reflections on the counterculture, and comments about politics and culture.

Krassner has never lost his wit and his irreverence. He continues to show withering contempt for conventional political and cultural values, but he can express it all with outrageous humor.

Krassner's most famous and most inspired creation was the "Disneyland Memorial Orgy". At the time of Disney's death, Krassner commissioned a poster featuring all the major Disney characters engaged in obscene and perverted sexual acts. It was very funny. He tells the story of it in this book.

I loved it.

5.0 out of 5 stars Less Funny, More Provocative--Price is a WOW, November 20, 2011

By 

Robert D. Steele (Oakton, VA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Who's to Say What's Obscene?: Politics, Culture, and Comedy in America Today (Paperback)

First, a confession. I am 59 years old and had no idea who Paul Krassner was/is. The more I read through the book the more I marveled at his pioneering endeavors and their continuing relevance as Occupy struggles to find its voice and focus. So for all the folks that don't know who Paul Krassner is, at under $3.00 this book is a WOW value, and I recommend it for that alone.

This is NOT a funny book. There are a few places here and there where one can see the deep tragic comedy possibility, but more than anything this is a very provocative book that beats a single theme: the obscenity of all that we allow to be done in our name, to our bodies and our environment, to our families, schools, economy, and the Republic itself. Obscene, they name is a two-party tyranny and a Congress so corrupt they shame every dictator (all 40+ of them, all but two "best pals" of the US Government) in their craven greed and lack of democratic integrity.

Ariana Huffington's foreword is useful (disclosure: I stopped blogging for Huffington Post because their child reviewers kept deleting my graphics--HuffPo is culturally out of synch with multi-media communications). She praises Paul Krassner for his "incendiary journalism" and for the role that his sharp humor has played in calling attention to contradictions and hypocrisy. I take this with a grain of salt since Huffington, while calling Congress corrupt, has completely avoided the deeper corruption, the two-party tyranny that excludes all other parties and marginalizes roughly 40% of the citizen-voters. In my view, anyone unwilling to confront the two-party tyranny with the Electoral Reform Act of 2012 that is circulating within Occupy, is hypocritical at root--superficially pompous, pedantic, and posturing on everything except the ONE THING that is the "root obscenity."

This is a book worth reading more than once. There are gifted turns of phrase on every page.

QUOTE (9): "Reality is out-running satire."

Depressing: Obscenity laws used to punish truth-tellers. The author--whom I have never heard of before--comes across as hugely authentic, thoughtful, and a truly extraordinary experienced mind on this and other abuses of government.

Self-censorship is more obscene than direct censorship. This in the context of a very long depressing list of cancelled events, I have the word "shocking" in my notes.

Long piece on how repression of specific words (e.g. N-Word--Amazon won't let me spell it out) gives them more power to hurt.

Fascinating look at missing scenes from Borat--possibly a unique aspect of this book.

QUOTE (72): "Terrorism begins at home." See all my other reviews (over 1700 of them, in 98 categories better accessed at Phi Beta Iota the Public Intelligence Blog) for why I salute this author and this statement. Pogo got it right long ago: what we allow to be done in our name is the enemy, is obscene, is a disgrace to the Republic.

Long sections on marijuana, magic mushrooms, and I totally agree on the urgency of decriminalizing marijuana (and then legalizing it, I learn this is two different things).

Midway through the book I note how deeply I am appreciating the author in relation to:
01 Reflections on resistance
02 Price one pays for insanity (or deep corruption) in government.

As I write this I am sitting in a hotel room in Madrid with a truly excellent BBC World News panel on corruption in India. Knowing what I know about the USA, I would say that we can learn from the recent Indian focus on corruption as well as the Pope's recent pronouncement on corruption (my letter to the Pope in January 2011 on secular corruption as the root problem can be seen by searching for < Assisi intelligence >.

Below bears on Occupy today:

QUOTE (132): "During the panel, Ginsberg said, "I think there was one slide shade of error is describing the Beat movement as primarily a protest movement. That was the thing that Kerouac was always complaining about. He felt the literary aspect or the spiritual aspects or the emotional aspects was not so much protests at all, but a declaration of unconditioned mind beyond protests, beyond resentment, beyond loser, beyond *winner*--*way* beyond winner--beyond winner or loser."

It could be said that Occupy is a state of mind emergent, as well as my favorite topic these days, a manifesto for Open Source Everything (transparency, truth, and trust). In this section of the book the author quotes Coyote as saying that Ginsberg represented an enlarged notion of sanity.

All this ties in with the core theme of the book, i.e. the hippies had it right in their focus on the earth, love, anti-war, anti-greed. They were the 99% then, but not respected because there was a much larger middle class and blue collar class that had not yet had its multiple bubbles burst.

TODAY I LEARNED (side post to Reddit) that Lipitor kills memory and that Ambien does also. Holy cow--this is LOTS worse than hurting the liver to save the heart.

I want to draw all potential buyers of this book to a paragraph on page 193 that begins "China is a Big-Brother, slave-labor-driven, human-rights-violating, Maoist dictatorship from which the United States government borrows trillions.... " The rest of this paragraph is a near perfect summation of the obscenity of what America has become--divorced from ethics, reality, or even a common purpose remotely connected to a public interest. We've been hijacked, sunk, murdered a million times by our own corrupt government that enables corrupt banks, and we still have no intelligent discussion on television or in the Republican debates or in the Democratic theater of governance that is itself obscene.

Fascinating review of books that prisons ban, and what this section really illuminates for me is the insanity as well as the out of control nature of the US federal, state, and local governments in all those instances where they are dealing with those whom "the authorities" have chosen to marginalize.

On page 206 I find a brilliant authentic highly credible discussion of how the common threat of government crack-downs using the obscenity cover was that they all questioned the wisdom of government policy. As I myself am perhaps the most qualified as well as the most vocal critic of the US Government in terms of its lack of intelligence (decision-support) and integrity, I can testify that before you become important enough to be censored, you spend a very long time being ignored. So anyone the US Government censors, I want to pay attention to.

The author depresses me completely with a long list of truly frightening prison sentences as well as arrests and intimidations. And this was BEFORE the Patriot Act and the flood of borrowed money channelled by the Department of Homeland Security (an idiotic oxymoron if ever there was one) to militarize the police, fund Haliburton-built "civil unrest prisons" and so on.

Courses Mort Sahl is teaching now:
"Critical Thinking"
"The Revolutionary's Handbook"

Worth looking up: "Counterculture Hall of Fame"

Books brought to my attention by this book:
Confessions of a Raving, Unconfined Nut: Misadventures in Counter-Culture
A Man Without a Country
The Illuminatus! Trilogy: The Eye in the Pyramid, The Golden Apple, Leviathan

Books I have reviewed that I recommend in tandem with this book:
Counterculture Through the Ages: From Abraham to Acid House
Philosophy and the Social Problem: The Annotated Edition
Breaking the Real Axis of Evil: How to Oust the World's Last Dictators by 2025
Nobodies: Modern American Slave Labor and the Dark Side of the New Global Economy

DVDs I have reviewed and recommend:
The U.S. vs. John Lennon
American Drug War: The Last White Hope
Inside Job