Article Paul Krassner and The Realist
Type: Hoaxer.
Summary: In the sixties, Paul Krassner was one of the original Yippies. His magazine “The Realist” was known for perpetuating political hoaxes.
Posted by: Elliot Feldman
In 1958, at the height of the Cold War, Paul Krassner began publishing his magazine “The Realist.” It was deep leftist political satire in the style of early Mad Magazine and “sick comic” Lenny Bruce, his close friend.
As a kid in 1960s Detroit, I subscribed to “The Realist.” It sometimes arrived wrapped in a brown bag paper. Most of the time, it never arrived at all. The government censors at that time didn’t like “The Realist” and Krassner.
One of the magazine’s trademarks was its self-created political hoaxes. Its tagline was “The Truth is Silly Putty.”
Lenny Bruce and JFK
Krassner’s first noteworthy “Realist” hoax was the 1964 obituary of Lenny Bruce while the comic was still alive. When criticized, Krassner defended himself and Bruce, claiming that he had published the obituary because his old friend might as well have been dead. After all, in 1964, Bruce couldn’t find nightclub work because of his longstanding censorship battles with the government.
The most controversial “Realist” hoax was published a couple of years after the JFK assassination. It was a reaction to William Manchester’s authorized Kennedy biography. The “Realist” article was titled “The Parts That Were Left Out of the Kennedy Book.” The “parts” included a scene with soon-to-be-inaugurated President Lyndon Johnson caught buggering the corpse of President Kennedy in its casket by Jackie Kennedy. To be more exact, the article stated that LBJ was humping the bullet-hole wound in JFK’s throat.
Some members of the mainstream press and other Washington political wonks, including Daniel Ellsberg of Pentagon Papers fame, actually believed this incident to be true. It was this hoax that gave Krassner the first of many moments of notoriety.
Disney
Another moment of notoriety was “The Realist’s” “Disneyland Memorial Orgy”, a poster-sized sexually explicit comic panel drawn by Mad Magazine artist Wally Wood. Among the offensive acts depicted in the comic was Snow White being ravaged by the Dwarfs; a nude Tinkerbelle standing too close to Pinocchio’s growing nose; and Mickey Mouse shooting up with a syringe. Strangely enough, Disney never sued Krassner.
Yippies and the FBI
In 1968, Krassner co-founded the Yippies with Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin. The Youth International Party was a response to the upcoming Chicago Democratic Convention. In Chicago, they named “Pigasus the Immortal”, a pig, to be their party’s presidential nominee.
In 1975, the FBI paid a visit to Krassner after he published a hoax interview with Patty Hearst during the period when the heiress had been kidnapped.
Krassner in Recent Years
During the eighties and nineties, Paul Krassner began writing for television and freelancing articles for mainstream magazines.
These days, he’s semi-retired, writing for various publications including “High Times” and the online zine, The Huffington Post.
References
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- ”>“Reflections on the Art of the Put-on”
, Michael Dooley, AIGA - “The Lost Bridge Between Mad and Wikipedia”, Jesse Walker, Reason
- “Interview with Paul Krassner”, Re/Search Publications
