RAG RADIO / Thorne Dreyer : Musician/Author Bobby Bridger & 'Lost Gonzo' Guitarist John Inmon

Musician and author Bobby Bridger with guitarist John Inmon at the KOOP studios in Austin, Texas, August 23, 2013. Photo by Roger Baker / The Rag Blog.

Rag Radio podcast:
Singer-songwriter and author Bobby Bridger
with 'Lost Gonzo' guitarist John Inmon

Houston-based musician Bobby Bridger, also a chronicler of the old west and American indigenous culture, was joined by signature Austin guitarist John Inman.

By Rag Radio / The Rag Blog / September 3, 2013

Bobby Bridger, singer-songwriter, author, and noted historian of the old west, and virtuoso guitarist John Inman, original member of the Lost Gonzo Band, joined host Thorne Dreyer, Friday, August 23, 2013, in discussion and live performance on Rag Radio.

Rag Radio is a syndicated radio program produced at the studios of KOOP 91.7-FM, a cooperatively-run all-volunteer community radio station in Austin, Texas.

Listen to or download our August 24 interview show with Bobby Bridger and John Inmon here:


Legendary Texas musician Bobby Bridger, who is also a noted historian of the old west and of indigenous American culture, was our guest for the third time on Rag Radio. Virtuoso guitarist and original 'Lost Gonzo' John Inmon joined Bridger on the show. Bridger and Inmon have worked together for over 40 years and are currently co-producing an album which they are developing through Kickstarter. It is Bridger’s first studio album in 12 years.

Houston-based singer-songwriter Bobby Bridger is also an author, playwright, painter, and historian. He has recorded numerous albums and is the author of four books including A Ballad of the West, Buffalo Bill and Sitting Bull: Inventing the Wild West, and Where the Tall Grass Grows: Becoming Indigenous and the Mythological Legacy of the American West, and the epic theatrical trilogy, A Ballad of the West. Bobby has appeared on PBS’s Austin City Limits, PBS’s American Experience, and CBS' Good Morning America.

Also listen to our November 18, 2011 and September 3, 2012 Rag Radio shows with Bobby Bridger at the Internet Archive.

From left, Bobby Bridger and John Inmon with Rag Radio's Thorne Dreyer and Tracey Schulz. Photo by Roger Baker / The Rag Blog.

Austin musician John Inmon is considered one of Texas’ signature guitarists. He was an original member of the famed Lost Gonzo Band, founded in 1973, which toured with Jerry Jeff Walker and appeared three times on Austin City Limits. He also toured with Michael Murphey (now known as Michael Martin Murphey) as part of  the Cosmic Cowboy Orchestra. Inmon has also played with Townes van Zandt, Jimmy LaFave, Eliza Gilkyson, Ray Wylie Hubbard, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Joe Ely, Delbert Mcclinton, Marcia Ball, Omar and the Howlers, and many more.

John Inmon was honored as the 2012 Texas Music Awards Producer of the Year.

Rag Radio is hosted and produced by Rag Blog editor and long-time alternative journalist Thorne Dreyer, a pioneer of the Sixties underground press movement. Tracey Schulz is the show's engineer and co-producer.

Rag Radio has aired since September 2009 on KOOP 91.7-FM, an all-volunteer cooperatively-run community radio station in Austin, Texas. Rag Radio is broadcast live every Friday from 2-3 p.m. (CDT) on KOOP and is rebroadcast on Sundays at 10 a.m. (EDT) on WFTE, 90.3-FM in Mt. Cobb, PA, and 105.7-FM in Scranton, PA. Rag Radio is now also aired and streamed on KPFT-HD3 90.1 -- Pacifica radio in Houston -- on Wednesdays at 1 p.m.

The show is streamed live on the web and, after broadcast, all Rag Radio shows are posted as podcasts at the Internet Archive.

Rag Radio is produced in association with The Rag Blog, a progressive Internet newsmagazine, and the New Journalism Project, a Texas 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation.

Rag Radio can be contacted at ragradio@koop.org.

Coming up on Rag Radio:
Friday, September 6, 2013: Award-winning novelist and screenwriter Stephen Harrigan, author of The Gates of the Alamo and Challenger Park.
Friday, September 13, 2013: Populist author and commentator Jim Hightower.
Friday, September 20, 2013: Long-time activist Michael James, founder of Rising Up Angry and Chicago's Heartland Cafe.

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RAG RADIO / Thorne Dreyer : Sociologist, Author, and New Left Pioneer and Critic, Todd Gitlin

Todd Gitlin. Photo by David Shankbone / Wikimedia Commons.

Rag Radio podcast:
Sociologist, media critic, author, 
and SDS pioneer Todd Gitlin

Our discussion with the renowned scholar and author ranges from the legacy of the Port Huron Statement and Gitlin's critical take on the later days of the movement, to the role of mass media in shaping social events.

By Rag Radio / The Rag Blog / July 24, 2013

Todd Gitlin, an American writer, sociologist, and media scholar -- and a pioneer of the '60s New Left and underground press movements -- was Thorne Dreyer's guest on Rag Radio, Friday, July 19, 2013, in the first of two interviews.

Our second on-air visit with Gitlin will take place on Friday, August 9. It will be broadcast live from 2-3 p.m. (CDT) on KOOP 91.7-FM in Austin, Texas, and streamed live on the Internet.

Rag Radio is a syndicated radio program produced at the studios of KOOP, a cooperatively-run all-volunteer community radio station in Austin, Texas.

Listen to or download this episode of Rag Radio here:


Todd Gitlin, an American writer, sociologist, communications scholar, novelist, poet, and public intellectual -- and an early president of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) -- is the author of 15 books, including Occupy Nation: The Roots, the Spirit, and the Promise of Occupy Wall Street.

He is a professor of journalism and sociology and chair of the Ph. D. program in Communications at Columbia University. He holds degrees from Harvard University (mathematics), the University of Michigan (political science), and the University of California, Berkeley (sociology). He lectures frequently on culture and politics in the United States and abroad

Gitlin is on the editorial board of Dissent and is a contributing writer to Mother Jones. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, and many more.

His other books, several of which have won major awards, include The Sixties: Years of Hope, Days of Rage, The Whole World Is Watching, Media Unlimited: How the Torrent of Images and Sounds Overwhelms Our Lives, and The Twilight of Common Dreams: Why America Is Wracked by Culture Wars.

Todd Gitlin was the third president of SDS, in 1963-64, and was coordinator of the SDS Peace Research and Education Project in 1964-65, during which time he helped organize the first national demonstration against the Vietnam War and the first American demonstrations against corporate aid to the apartheid regime in South Africa.

During 1968-69, he was an editor and writer for the San Francisco Express Times, and through 1970 wrote widely for the underground press. In 2003-06, he was a member of the Board of Directors of Greenpeace USA.

On the show we discuss the lasting legacy of SDS and the Port Huron Statement; Gitlin's critiques of the '60s movement and the Left involving issues like violence -- especially in the case of the Weather Underground and later Black Panther Party -- and "identity politics"; the role of the mass media in shaping our understanding of events, including social movements; and some reflections on the Occupy Wall Street movement.


Rag Radio is hosted and produced by Rag Blog editor and long-time alternative journalist Thorne Dreyer, a pioneer of the Sixties underground press movement.

The show has aired since September 2009 on KOOP 91.7-FM, an all-volunteer cooperatively-run community radio station in Austin, Texas. Rag Radio is broadcast live every Friday from 2-3 p.m. (CDT) on KOOP and is rebroadcast on Sundays at 10 a.m. (EDT) on WFTE, 90.3-FM in Mt. Cobb, PA, and 105.7-FM in Scranton, PA.

The show is streamed live on the web by both stations and, after broadcast, all Rag Radio shows are posted as podcasts at the Internet Archive.

Rag Radio is produced in association with The Rag Blog, a progressive Internet newsmagazine, and the New Journalism Project, a Texas 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation. Tracey Schulz is the show's engineer and co-producer.

Rag Radio can be contacted at ragradio@koop.org.

Coming up on Rag Radio:
THIS FRIDAY, July 26, 2013: Sanford, FL-based political science prof Jay D. Jurie and Austin lawyer Gary Bledsoe, President of the Texas NAACP, on the consequences of the Trayvon Martin verdict.
Friday, August 2, 2013: Linda Litowsky and Stefan Wray of ChannelAustin on the historic significance of public access television.
Friday, August 9, 2013: We continue our discussion with sociologist, author, and New Left pioneer Todd Gitlin.

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RAG RADIO / Thorne Dreyer : Philosophy Scholar Bill Meacham on 'How to Be an Excellent Human'

Bill Meacham, right, with Rag Radio host Thorne Dreyer in the studios of KOOP Radio in Austin, Texas, Friday, May 31, 2013. Photo by Tracey Schulz / Rag Radio.

Rag Radio podcast: 
Philosophy scholar Bill Meacham,
author of 'How to Be an Excellent Human'

"By working for the good -- that is, the healthy functioning -- of the world around us, we nourish that which nourishes us, and we thrive." -- Bill Meacham

By Rag Radio / The Rag Blog / June 6, 2013

Also find the podcast of our May 24, 2013, Rag Radio interview with counterculture legend John Sinclair, below.

Philosophy scholar and activist Bill Meacham, the author of How to Be an Excellent Human: Mysticism, Evolutionary Psychology and the Good Life, was Thorne Dreyer's guest on Rag Radio, Friday, May 31, 2013.

Rag Radio is a syndicated radio program produced at the studios of KOOP 91.7-FM, a cooperatively-run all-volunteer community radio station in Austin, Texas.

Listen to or download our interview with Bill Meacham here:


On the show we discuss issues raised in Bill’s book, How to Be an Excellent Human and in his essay, “Imagine There’s No Morality,” posted at The Rag Blog. We talk about how to use the discipline of philosophy to address questions like what it means to be a human and how we can live good and fulfilling lives; how we can make ethical and moral decisions; and the ethical implications and motivations involved in working for social change.

Bill also contrasts what he poses as the "Goodness" paradigm vs. the "Rightness" paradigm, and addresses metaphysical issues like "panpsychist" mysticism and the mystical concept of "Oneness" -- and how quantum physics may be seen to inform that concept.

Bill Meacham is an independent scholar in philosophy. Also an activist and former staffer at Austin's '60s-‘70s underground paper, The Rag, Bill studied philosophy at Williams College, Columbia University, and the University of Texas at Austin where he received his Ph.D. Meacham also spent many years working as a computer programmer, systems analyst, and project manager. He blogs at Philosophy for Real Life and The Rag Blog, and his writings can also be found at What's What.

John Sinclair.

Rag Radio podcast:
Sixties counterculture legend John Sinclair

Also listen to our Rag Radio interview with Amsterdam-based poet John Sinclair. A legendary counterculture figure from the '60s and '70s, Sinclair founded the White Panther Party in Detroit in 1968, managed the historic “avant-rock” proto-punk band, the MC5, worked with the underground newspaper, the Fifth Estate, and founded the Detroit Artists Workshop.

Find our May 24, 2013 interview with John Sinclair here:


After John Sinclair was sentenced to 9-1/2-10 years in prison for giving two joints to an undercover policewoman, John Lennon celebrated him with the song “John Sinclair.”

A 29-month campaign to gain his freedom climaxed in a mammoth eight-hour “John Sinclair Freedom Rally” in Ann Arbor, where John Lennon and Yoko Ono, Stevie Wonder, Allen Ginsberg, Phil Ochs, Bobby Seale, and others performed and spoke in front of 15,000 people. Three days after the concert, the Michigan Supreme Court released Sinclair, and later overturned his conviction.

Sinclair moved to New Orleans in 1991, where he was named the city’s most popular disc jockey by OffBeat Magazine five years in a row, and moved to Amsterdam in 2003. Since the mid-'90s, John Sinclair has performed spoken-word poetry with his band, The Blues Scholars. One of the pioneers of podcasting, his weekly internet program, the John Sinclair Radio Show, is the flagship of Radio Free Amsterdam.


Rag Radio is hosted and produced by Rag Blog editor and long-time alternative journalist Thorne Dreyer, a pioneer of the Sixties underground press movement.

The show has aired since September 2009 on KOOP 91.7-FM, an all-volunteer cooperatively-run community radio station in Austin, Texas. Rag Radio is broadcast live every Friday from 2-3 p.m. (CDT) on KOOP and is rebroadcast on Sundays at 10 a.m. (EDT) on WFTE, 90.3-FM in Mt. Cobb, PA, and 105.7-FM in Scranton, PA.

The show is streamed live on the web by both stations and, after broadcast, all Rag Radio shows are posted as podcasts at the Internet Archive.

Rag Radio is produced in association with The Rag Blog, a progressive Internet newsmagazine, and the New Journalism Project, a Texas 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation. Tracey Schulz is the show's engineer and co-producer.

Rag Radio can be contacted at ragradio@koop.org.

Coming up on Rag Radio:
THIS FRIDAY, June 7, 2013: Mother Jones correspondent Tom Philpott on agricultural sustainability and the "Politics of Food."

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RAG RADIO / Thorne Dreyer : Economist Gar Alperovitz Asks, 'What Then Must We Do?'

Rag Radio podcast: 
Political economist Gar Alperovitz,
author of 'What Then Must We Do?'

“Like a picture slowly developing in a photographer's darkroom, the potential elements of a new system, of something meaningful and very American, are beginning to emerge." -- Gar Alperovitz

By Rag Radio / The Rag Blog / May 30, 2013

Political economist Gar Alperovitz, whose new book is What Then Must We Do?: Straight Talk About the Next American Revolution, was our guest on Rag Radio, Friday, May 10, 2013. Rag Radio is a syndicated radio program produced at the studios of KOOP 91.7-FM, a cooperatively-run all-volunteer community radio station in Austin, Texas.

Listen to or download our interview with Gar Alperovitz here:


On the show, Alperovtitz talks with host Thorne Dreyer and The Rag Blog's Roger Baker about issues raised in his new book, What Then Must We Do?.

In the book, Alperovitz speaks about “why the time is right to democratize the ownership of wealth to strengthen our communities and our nation, through local cooperatives, worker-owned companies, and independent business, as well as larger publicly-owned enterprises and reinvigorated institutions.”

Alperovitz told the Rag Radio audience that "we are living in a systemic crisis, not simply a political crisis... You see that the long, long trends -- for 30 years or more -- simply don’t much change if you elect this politician or that politician."

"Over the last 30 years," he said, "real wages for most people have simply not moved up or down more than a few pennies. The top one percent has increased its income share over that 30-year span, from 10 percent to more than 20 percent. Over 30 years the top 1 percent has taken just about all of the gains of the economic system."

And, he added, "That’s extraordinary."

The new book, he says, documents "trend after trend after trend where the big picture keeps getting worse -- or nothing gets better. Poverty increases, the incarceration rate has gone up dramatically... CO2 production has gone up 30 percent... On many many fronts, the trends don’t much change, and things get worse, and that tells you that something deeper in the system is at work."

"And," Alperovitz said, "I don’t think its going to change until we actually begin slowly but steadily evolving... and moving towards what can only be called a different system in the United States, something different from corporate capitalism. And certainly different from state socialism or communism. Something that has an American flavor and development."

"And," he added, "the book suggests that, partly because of the pain levels, and because things aren’t working for people, if you look closely there’s a lot of developments that are going in a new direction. And a lot that the press certainly doesn’t report on."

Alperovitz believes that many encouraging things are happening largely under the radar in this country, including the burgeoning workers' cooperative movement and other public experiments that are addressing democratization of the economy.

"Like a picture slowly developing in a photographer's darkroom, the potential elements of a new system, of something meaningful and very American, are beginning to emerge," he writes.

According to Daniel Ellsberg, "For decades, Gar Alperovitz has been at the forefront of attempts to understand what could lie beyond our increasingly broken system of corporate capitalism," and his new book "offers by far the most serious, intellectually grounded strategy for system-changing yet to appear."

University of Texas economist James Galbraith calls Alperovitz's book a "cooperative and democratic manifesto," and says, "May his ideas and ideals flourish."

And Bill Fletcher Jr. wrote in a review of What Then Must We Do?, published on The Rag Blog, that Alperovitz "proceeds to identify actual examples of different struggles and projects that have been undertaken by progressives that show that a different way of organizing life and the economy is not only a great idea, but living reality."

Fletcher writes that, "The reforms proposed are both clear and compelling and, in many cases, achievable."

But he also suggests that Alperovitz's strategy as incomplete: "The struggle for structural reforms and survival presented by Alperovitz is essential in cornering the political Right and changing the 'common sense' of the U.S. political arena. But it is not enough to wound the rabid beast; one must ultimately bring it down."

According to Fletcher, "Alperovitz’s platform is at best one component in a much more long-term socialist strategy."

Gar Alperovitz has had a distinguished career as a historian, political economist, activist, writer, and government official. He is currently the Lionel R. Bauman Professor of Political Economy at the University of Maryland; was co-founder of the Democracy Collaborative; and is a former Fellow of Kings College, Cambridge University, Harvard’s Institute of Politics, and the Institute for Policy Studies; and a Guest Scholar at the Brookings Institution.

He is the author of critically acclaimed books including America Beyond Capitalism and The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb, and his articles have appeared in The New York Times, the Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, the New Republic, The Nation, and the Atlantic, among other popular and academic publications.

Also see Roger Baker's review of Alperovitz's earlier book, America Beyond Capitalism, at The Rag Blog, and listen to the podcast of our February 3, 2012, Rag Radio interview with Gar Alperovitz.

Rag Radio is hosted and produced by Rag Blog editor and long-time alternative journalist Thorne Dreyer, a pioneer of the Sixties underground press movement.

The show has aired since September 2009 on KOOP 91.7-FM, an all-volunteer cooperatively-run community radio station in Austin, Texas. Rag Radio is broadcast live every Friday from 2-3 p.m. (CDT) on KOOP and is rebroadcast on Sundays at 10 a.m. (EDT) on WFTE, 90.3-FM in Mt. Cobb, PA, and 105.7-FM in Scranton, PA.

The show is streamed live on the web by both stations and, after broadcast, all Rag Radio shows are posted as podcasts at the Internet Archive.

Rag Radio is produced in association with The Rag Blog, a progressive Internet newsmagazine, and the New Journalism Project, a Texas 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation. Tracey Schulz is the show's engineer and co-producer.

Rag Radio can be contacted at ragradio@koop.org.

Coming up on Rag Radio:
THIS FRIDAY, May 31, 2013: Philosophy scholar Bill Meacham, author of How to Be an Excellent Human.
Friday, June 7, 2013: Mother Jones correspondent Tom Philpott on agricultural sustainability and the "Politics of Food."

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RAG RADIO / Thorne Dreyer : Journalism Prof Robert Jensen is 'Arguing for Our Lives'

Robert Jensen in the studios of KOOP in Austin, Texas, Friday, May 10, 2013. Photos by William Michael Hanks / The Rag Blog.

Rag Radio podcast: 
Journalism professor and activist
Robert Jensen is 'Arguing for Our Lives'

"I feel what I’m often doing is kind of a remedial course in how to see the world." -- Robert Jensen on Rag Radio

By Thorne Dreyer / The Rag Blog / May 23, 2013

Author, activist, journalism professor, and cutting-edge radical thinker Robert Jensen was our guest on Rag Radio, Friday, May 10, 2013. Rag Radio is a syndicated radio program produced at the studios of KOOP 91.7-FM, a cooperatively-run all-volunteer community radio station in Austin, Texas.

Listen to or download our interview with Robert Jensen here:


On the show, we discuss issues raised in Jensen's latest book, Arguing for Our Lives: A User's Guide to Constructive Dialog. The book has been described as a "lively primer on critical thinking... that explains how we can work collectively to enrich our intellectual lives." Author Raj Patel says that Jensen, in the book, "reacquaints us with the political and social skills we'll need if we're to reclaim politics for the 21st century."

Robert Jensen is a widely-published writer and author, a political activist, and a professor in the School of Journalism at the University of Texas at Austin, where he teaches courses in media law, ethics, and politics. Prior to his academic career, Jensen worked for a decade as a professional journalist.

In Arguing for Our Lves, and in our Rag Radio interview, Jensen addresses issues related to how we comprehend the world, how we organize the information we learn, and how we communicate what we have come to understand. It's about analysis and rhetoric and critical thinking.
 
Jensen believes that people in our increasingly complex society are struggling  "to make sense of and organize this incredible flood of information that’s available to us now. And so a book on some basics about critical thinking struck me as useful both for a student audience and an adult audience."

"So I try to do critical thinking about difficult and controversial subjects," Jensen told us.

In his teaching at UT-Austin, Jensen told the Rag Radio audience, "I feel what I’m often doing is kind of a remedial course in how to see the world."

"The public education system doesn’t really function," he says, "especially in the way it buries so much of our history."

"In the classroom it seems clear to me that every year students come in a little less able to deal with some of the basic concepts like democracy," he said. "Not just a textbook definition, but what does it really mean? They’re often very technically competent but unimaginative."

"I’ve noticed a trend in the last few years where I have very good students in traditional terms. They test well, they score highly on exams and standardized tests. But they have no conception of the larger world."

Jensen says he has students, "usually from smaller towns," who tell him that their parents, people in their church, and others in their community "will take them aside and say, 'Now remember, you’re going to UT-Austin and they’re going to try to destroy everything you believe, and you have to stay strong.'"

Tracey Schulz, left, Robert Jensen,
and Thorne Dreyer.

"Critical thinking is threatening," he says "It’s certainly threatening to certain kinds of traditions. It’s certainly threatening to concentrated wealth and power."

Many in our increasingly complex world, Jensen believes, are feeling what he characterizes as "authentic anxiety."  They're "looking at the world, realizing that we face these complex problems that have no easy answers, maybe don’t have answers at all, and that that is a source of anxiety," he says.

We all feel "anxiety about things like the multiple ecological crises, the fact that no one really thinks that democracy is working in any meaningful way, the fact that our pop culture is increasingly corrosive, especially around issues of gender and sexuality."

"And I think, especially at this moment in history, especially on the ecological front where the data is pretty clear, that we are facing down problems that are not going to be solved easily and that may not be solvable at all in the confines of our normal everyday lives."

"Well," Jensen says, "when I look at that, I feel a sense of anguish."

But he thinks that anguish, "and a certain kind of grief," is an understandable and appropriate response. Just as "anxiety does not lead to paralysis," he says, "neither does anguish and grief. It can lead to action, it can be a great motivator."

"And," Jensen adds, "that sense of overload that people feel is perfectly understandable. I feel it myself. We’re all talking about how marvelous it is to live in the information age, but a lot of people experience it as a kind of burden."

Jensen believes that in order to comprehend and deal with the world around us, we need to overcome the pervasive anti-intellectualism in our society. "A lot of people kind of sneer at the idea of being an intellectual, because it’s been so associated with elitism," He says. But, "you can’t act in the world if you don’t understand the world."

"If you are going to be meaningful in organizing and acting to make a more just and sustainable world," that action must be "based on some idea, some theory, some analysis." "We all have an ideology," Jensen told the Rag Radio audience. "Everybody’s got a worldview, a framework through which we understand things. Nobody comes into the world 'fresh.' There’s no such thing as a 'blank slate.'

"Ideology," he says, is also "a very useful word to use to describe the way people in power can sometimes impose their point of view, through the educational system and mass media... and make their ideology appear to be the common sense of the culture."

Dreyer and Jensen at KOOP.

According to Jensen, "Modern science has done a very good job of helping us understand this universe by what scientists call reductionism. When you take a little part of the world and you try to figure it out, and then you hope that by putting all those parts together you can figure things out."

"And on the surface," he says, "it appears that that’s been a huge success. We’ve figured out an enormous amount in a couple of centuries about how the world really works as a physical system." And, Jensen says, "the knowledge is quite stunning."

"But we are also learning every day more and more about what we don’t know," he points out. "It’s just kind of a reminder of the importance of intellectual humility." "What we don’t know," Jensen says, "will always outstrip what we do know."

"We continue to intervene in this larger universe in ways that we can’t predict and the consequences of which are often potentially -- and now, with climate change, literally -- life-threatening."

"And when we intervene on the basis of incomplete knowledge, what we’re really doing, not to get too theological here, is playing God. And the Bible itself is full of a lot of reminders about what happens when human beings think they’re God."

"It usually doesn’t end so well."

Robert Jensen's writing is published in mainstream and alternative media and appears regularly on The Rag Blog. He is a board member of the Third Coast Activist Resource Center and is active with the 5604 Manor Community Center in Austin, the Workers Defense Project, and Cooperation Texas, an organization committed to developing and supporting worker-owned cooperatives.

Jensen's other books include We Are All Apocalyptic Now: On the Responsibilities of Teaching, Preaching, Reporting, Writing, and Speaking Out; All My Bones Shake: Seeking a Progressive Path to the Prophetic Voice; Getting Off: Pornography and the End of Masculinity; The Heart of Whiteness: Confronting Race, Racism and White Privilege; Citizens of the Empire: The Struggle to Claim Our Humanity; and Writing Dissent: Taking Radical Ideas from the Margins to the Mainstream.

Robert Jensen was previously Thorne Dreyer's guest on Rag Radio on July 8, 2011.

Rag Radio is hosted and produced by Rag Blog editor and long-time alternative journalist Thorne Dreyer, a pioneer of the Sixties underground press movement.

The show has aired since September 2009 on KOOP 91.7-FM, an all-volunteer cooperatively-run community radio station in Austin, Texas. Rag Radio is broadcast live every Friday from 2-3 p.m. (CDT) on KOOP and is rebroadcast on Sundays at 10 a.m. (EDT) on WFTE, 90.3-FM in Mt. Cobb, PA, and 105.7-FM in Scranton, PA.

The show is streamed live on the web by both stations and, after broadcast, all Rag Radio shows are posted as podcasts at the Internet Archive.

Rag Radio is produced in association with The Rag Blog, a progressive Internet newsmagazine, and the New Journalism Project, a Texas 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation. Tracey Schulz is the show's engineer and co-producer.

Rag Radio can be contacted at ragradio@koop.org.

Coming up on Rag Radio:
THIS FRIDAY, May 24, 2013 (RESCHEDULED): Amsterdam-based poet John Sinclair, legendary founder of the White Panther Party and former manager of the MC5.
Friday, May 31, 2013: Philosophy scholar Bill Meacham, author of How to Be an Excellent Human.
Listen to our May 17, 2013 Rag Radio interview with political economist Gar Alperovitz, author of What Then Must We Do?

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Robert Jensen : The Universe Is an Undifferentiated Whole

In his new "primer on critical thinking," Arguing for Our Lives, Robert Jensen "connects abstract ideas with the everyday political and spiritual struggles of ordinary people."

Arguing for our lives:
The universe is an undifferentiated whole

The knowledge we humans can acquire -- while impressive in what it allows us to build -- is not adequate to manage the complexity of the world.

By Robert Jensen / The Rag Blog / May 8, 2013

UT journalism professor, author, and political activist Robert Jensen will be Thorne Dreyer's guest on Rag Radio, Friday, May 10, 2013, from 2-3 p.m. (CDT) on KOOP 91.7-FM in Austin, and streamed live to the world. The show will be rebroadcast by WFTE-FM in Mt. Cobb and Scranton, PA, Sunday morning, May 5, at 10 a.m. (EDT), and the podcast will be posted at the Internet Archive.

[The following is adapted from the new book Arguing for Our Lives: A User’s Guide to Constructive Dialogue from City Lights Books.]

“The universe is an undifferentiated whole. About that we can say nothing more.”

This catchy aphorism from political philosopher Bruce Wright may seem nonsensical at first glance, but is worth exploring in the service of deepening our intellectual humility. Facing multiple, cascading ecological crises, we humans need science more than ever -- and more than ever we need to understand the limits of science.

Like many, Wright -- a professor emeritus of political science from California State University, Fullerton -- is concerned about the unintended consequences of science and technology. When we started burning fossil fuels, for example, no one could have predicted global warming. If we try to “solve” the problem of global warming only through faith in increasingly complex technology, we should be prepared for new problems that typically come with such solutions.

The lesson is pretty clear: The knowledge we humans can acquire -- while impressive in what it allows us to build -- is not adequate to manage the complexity of the world. No matter how smart we are, our ignorance will always outstrip our knowledge, and so we routinely fail to anticipate or control the consequences of our science and technology.

Wright’s aphorism reinforces that point and takes it a step further: It’s not just that scientific analysis can’t tell us everything, but that the analytical process destroys the unity of what we are trying to study. When we analyze, the subject becomes an object, as we break it apart to allow us to poke and probe in the pursuit of that analysis.

To “differentiate,” in this context, means the act of perceiving and assigning distinctions within a system. Thinking of the universe as an undifferentiated whole recognizes its unity, providing a corrective to the method of modern science that breaks things down to manageable components that can be studied. That “reductionism” in science assumes that the behavior of a system can be understood most effectively by observing the behavior of its parts.

At first glance that may seem not only obvious but unavoidable. How else would we ever know anything? We can’t look out at the universe and somehow magically understand how things work -- we have to break it down into smaller parts.

Pond in the woods: Understanding the whole.

Imagine a pond in the woods. That ecosystem includes the air, water, and land -- the various inanimate objects such as rocks; the plants we see and their root structures underground; the animals and fish that are big enough for us to see and the many other micro-life forms we can’t observe with our eyes; and the weather.

No one person could walk into the scene and offer a detailed account of all that is happening in that ecosystem, let alone explain how it operates. Even a cursory description of the ecosystem requires knowledge of meteorology, botany, zoology, geology, chemistry, physics. To make sense of the complex relationships and interactions among all the players in that one small ecosystem, experts in those disciplines would observe, experiment, and explain their part of it.

Putting all that knowledge together, we can say some important things about the system, but we can’t claim to know how it really works. Not only is there is a unity to the ecosystem that we can’t understand, but our analytic approach destroys the unity we seek to understand.

Does that sound crazy? Consider two obvious limitations of our knowledge claims in science.

First, if we claim to understand the system through its component parts, we have to be able to identify all the relevant parts. How much do we know about the microscopic organisms and their role in that ecosystem? We know the things we have identified, using the tools we have at our disposal. But is that all there is to be identified, that which we can observe?

For all that scientists and farmers know about soil, for example, most of what happens in the soil is at the microscopic level and unknown to us. Second, while that pond ecosystem can be broken down into its component parts and studied, that study cannot include the dynamic interactions between all the parts, which are too complex to track. It’s not a failure of the method, but simply an unavoidable limitation.

In short, the whole is more than the sum of its parts, and considerably more than the sum of the parts we can observe. The process of scientific analysis -- of studying the parts to try to understand the whole -- is powerful but limited. When we take what we’ve learned about the parts and construct a picture of the whole, we will miss the complex interactions between all those parts, which are crucial in creating the whole.

There’s nothing wrong with using methods that are limited -- any method we employ will be limited. Scientists struggling with these problems understand the vexing nature of “complex adaptive systems,” a term that recognizes we are dealing not with static parts but with dynamic networks of interactions and that the behavior of the entities will change based on experience.

But problems arise when people make claims to definitive knowledge and then intervene in the world based on those claims, often with unpleasant results. Unintended consequences do damage that often is beyond repair.

Wright’s aphorism suggests we should not only see a specific ecosystem as a whole, but regard the universe as a whole, as one big system of complex and dynamic interactions. While seemingly fanciful at that level, this idea has been widely discussed at the scale of the planet.

To say that Earth is an undifferentiated whole is to suggest that everything in our world -- organic and inorganic -- can be understood to form a single self-regulating complex adaptive system. This is the Gaia hypothesis formulated by the environmentalist James Lovelock: The Earth itself is a living thing. Whether or not one goes that far, it focuses our attention on the dynamic, complex, adaptive nature of our world.

Wright’s provocative claim -- “About this we can say nothing more” -- doesn’t mean that we can say nothing at all about the component parts, only that we can’t pretend to say more than we can really know about the whole. To describe a system as an undifferentiated whole is to mark its integrity as a whole, that must be understood on those terms.

Once we see the world as a living system, our attempt to know it through analysis of the parts is, by definition, always an incomplete project. We can’t really know the whole world; it exceeds our capacity.

That’s not an argument against science, but an argument for humility.

This article was also published at Rabble.ca.

[Robert Jensen is a professor in the School of Journalism at the University of Texas at Austin and board member of the Third Coast Activist Resource Center in Austin. His latest books are Arguing for Our Lives: A User’s Guide to Constructive Dialogue and We Are All Apocalyptic Now: On the Responsibilities of Teaching, Preaching, Reporting, Writing, and Speaking Out. His writing is published extensively in mainstream and alternative media. Robert Jensen can be reached at rjensen@austin.utexas.edu. Read more articles by Robert Jensen on The Rag Blog.]

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RAG RADIO / Thorne Dreyer : 'Bronx Butch' Memoirist & Performance Artist Annie Rachele Lanzillotto

Annie Rachele Lanzillotto.

Rag Radio podcast:
'Bronx Butch' memoirist & performance
artist, Annie Rachele Lanzillotto

“Annie Lanzillotto, the bard of Bronx Italian butch, is an American original, a performance artist and cultural anthropologist whose work is unique... an astonishing writer possessed of an utterly inimitable voice." -- Author John Gennari

By Rag Radio / The Rag Blog / April 9, 2013

Author, poet, and performance artist Annie Rachele Lanzillotto was Thorne Dreyer's guest on Rag Radio, Friday, March 29, 2013. Rag Radio is a syndicated radio program produced at the studios of KOOP 91.7-FM in Austin, Texas.

Listen to or download our interview with Annie Rachele Lanzillotto here:


Annie Lanzillotto is an Italian-American lesbian memoirist, poet, performance artist, singer, and songwriter who lives in New York. She is the author of L is for Lion: An Italian Bronx Butch Freedom Memoir, published in 2013 by the State University of New York Press.

On Rag Radio Lanzillotto discusses her rich and multi-faceted life and art. She talks about and reads from her lusty, wise, and very witty memoir, which deals with a range of issues including her Italian-American upbringing, her father's PTSD and his physical abuse of her mother; her two bouts with cancer, and her coming to terms with her sexuality.

An American original.

As author John Gennari says, Annie's memoir "indelibly portrays the iconic Italian American spaces of kitchen, stoop, sidewalk, and street; the body as a site of humor and tragedy; and, above all, the family war zone as an uncanny intermingle of poignancy and brutality."

Annie Lanzillotto was born and raised in the Westchester Square neighborhood of the Bronx, and in Yonkers, New York, of Barese heritage. She received a B.A. with honors in medical anthropology from Brown University and an MFA in writing from Sarah Lawrence College. In 2012, she received a Franklin Furnace Archive Inc. Performance Commission and a Petracca Award in Poetry from Philadelphia Poets, and has received grants from the Rockefeller Foundation Next Generation Leadership Program, Dancing In the Streets, and the Puffin Foundation.

Lanzillotto is also the author of a book of poetry, Schistsong, and teaches master classes in solo performance for the Acting Apprentice Company at Actors Theatre of Louisville. She was selected as one of "200 essential New Yorkers" by The New York Times for her performance and installation at the 2000 Smithsonian Folklife Festival. She is included in Marquis Who's Who of American Women.

Rag Radio has aired since September 2009 on KOOP 91.7-FM, an all-volunteer cooperatively-run community radio station in Austin, Texas. Hosted and produced by Rag Blog editor and long-time alternative journalist Thorne Dreyer, a pioneer of the Sixties underground press movement, Rag Radio is broadcast every Friday from 2-3 p.m. (CDT) on KOOP, and is rebroadcast on Sundays at 10 a.m. (EDT) on WFTE, 90.3-FM in Mt. Cobb, PA, and 105.7-FM in Scranton, PA.

The show is streamed live on the web by both stations and, after broadcast, all Rag Radio shows are posted as podcasts at the Internet Archive.

Rag Radio is produced in association with The Rag Blog, a progressive Internet newsmagazine, and the New Journalism Project, a Texas 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation. Tracey Schulz is the show's engineer and co-producer.

Rag Radio can be contacted at ragradio@koop.org.

Coming up on Rag Radio:
THIS FRIDAY, April 12: Sixties activists and Yippie founders Judy Gumbo Albert and Nancy Kurshan.
Friday, April 19: Amsterdam-based poet John Sinclair, founder of the White Panther Party and former manager of the MC5.

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RAG RADIO / Thorne Dreyer : Progressive Sportswriter Dave Zirin Takes Off the Gloves

Dave Zirin: "Politics have always been a part of sports."

Rag Radio podcast:
Progressive sportswriter Dave Zirin
on the intersection of sports and politics

"Sports has become such a big business that the line between journalism and being a broadcast partner for all intents and purposes has been obliterated." -- Dave Zirin on Rag Radio

By Thorne Dreyer / The Rag Blog / March 28, 2013

Dave Zirin will speak on the politics of sports at the Belo Center for New Media on the University of Texas campus in Austin, Monday, April 1, from 7-9 p.m., an event sponsored by the Texas Program in Sports and Media.

Dave Zirin, sports editor at The Nation and author of Game Over: How Politics Has Turned the Sports World Upside Down, was our guest on Rag Radio, Friday, March 22, 2013. Rag Radio is a syndicated radio program produced at the studios of KOOP 91.7-FM in Austin, Texas.

Listen to or download our interview with Dave Zirin here:


Dave Zirin has been called “the best sportswriter in the United States,” by noted sports journalist Robert Lipsyte. Named one of UTNE Reader’s “50 Visionaries Who Are Changing Our World,” Zirin writes about the politics of sports for The Nation and hosts Edge of Sports Radio on Sirius XM.

Ron Jacobs of The Rag Blog called Zirin, "the man who politicized the sports pages," and The Washington Post described him as "the conscience of American sports writing." ("They didn't mean it as a compliment," Zirin told us with a chuckle.) Christine Brennan of USA Today called Zirin's Game Over: How Politics Has Turned the Sports World Upside Down, "the perfect book for our time in sports."

Zirin told the Rag Radio audience that the nature of sports journalism has changed dramatically in recent years. "Unfortunately," he said, "sports has become such a big business that the line between journalism and being a broadcast partner for all intents and purposes has been obliterated."

"I don’t think Hunter S. Thompson [who started out as a sportswriter] could have imagined a situation where the best journalists would work for places like the NBA.com, NFL.com, MLB.com."

Sports journalists need to be watchdogs, he said, because professional sports organizations represent "very powerful multi-billion dollar interests with tentacles in every aspect of our society."

In discussing his book, Game Over, about how politics has changed sports, Zirin says that “politics have always been a part of sports," but that things changed dramatically after the economic crisis of 2008. The owners, he says, “were freaking out about the loss of public subsidies which they had gotten used to over the last 20 years... And so they’re trying to figure out a way to restore profitability.”

“The most obvious thing is we almost lost the whole hockey season this year, we lost part of the NBA season last year, we almost lost the NFL season last year and the first quarter of the NFL season this year. And there were scabs -- so-called replacement referees who made the game unsafe -- and sometimes unwatchable.”

“When owners lock out players,” he pointed out, “they’re also locking out everybody that works in the parking lot, who works in the stadium, all the waiters and waitresses picking up an extra shift at the restaurants. And when you think that it’s our billions of dollars that go into building these stadiums... they’re not just locking out the players. They’re locking out all of us.”

Dave Zirin takes off the gloves.

When people ask him who his favorite sports owners are, “I always say, the Green Bay Packers. They’re the best 200,000 owners in sports. That’s a fan-owned team. And the difference is profound in terms of the relationship between the team and the community. The difference between a nonprofit that puts money back into the community, and a sponge that sucks money and resources out of the community.”

About violence in professional football, Zirin said that “trying to curb head injuries in the NFL is basically like trying to make a safe cigarette.” “It’s such a dangerous, violent game that your next play can always be your last, so they dehumanize the players. They don’t want you to get attached to them...” Players are “quickly ferried off the sidelines if they get hurt, brought to some back room so you don’t actually have to see the effect of the injuries…”

“You can’t really separate football from the violence,” he says, but he believes there are things that can be done, “like maybe having certified medical concussion experts on every single sideline in the NFL.” “One player said to me, 'You’ll know the NFL is serious when they propose reforms that actually cost them money.'"

Zirin is very critical of the hypocritical way major league baseball has handled the steroids issue. “It was either a situation of malign neglect or malignant intent,” he says. With “owners happily looking the other way, to make sure that the home runs would keep getting hit, the fans would keep coming to the park, and the game would keep growing.”

He is also critical of the baseball writers who are keeping deserving players like Jeff Bagwell -- “anybody who has a whiff of rumor about them” -- out of the Hall of Fame. “It is guilt by association, guilt by rumor, and guilt by innuendo,” he said, and smacks of Joe McCarthy.

Zirin discussed the story of Houston Rockets rookie Royce White who suffers from a severe anxiety disorder and has been “battling with the Rockets over how they would deal with his mental health.” As Zirin wrote in an article run on The Rag Blog, "For months, the 21-year-old has been sitting out the season in protest: a rebel with a cause." "White has become a crusader for change," he wrote, "calling out the NBA for disregarding mental illness and treating him like 'a commodity.'"

Zirin told the Rag Radio audience that White "has developed quite the radical consciousness. Just by standing up and just by the abuse he’s taken.” White “did an interview with ESPN and he said that the majority of players in the NBA are mentally ill,” but that they self-medicate with alcohol and drugs.

“Mental health issues are nearly taboo to talk about in the world of sports,” Zirin says. It’s only “in recent years that players have begun to come out of this particular closet.”

Zirin says more women are actively involved in sports than ever before, but that there’s “less and less visibility. There’s less coverage of women’s sports now then there was 10 years ago. And less coverage 10 years ago then there was 20 years ago.”

He talked about a major study out of the Tucker Center at the University of Minnesota that asked the question, “Does sex -- and I think we can more appropriately say, sexism -- sell women’s sports? Are people more likely to watch women’s sports when women athletes dress up in certain ways?”

“They did this massive research project on this issue, interviewing tens of thousands of people, and what they came up with was that sexism actually hurts women’s sports. It makes people less likely to consume women’s sports.”

Zirin says that the LGBT movement has had a major impact on the sports world and he believes that there are gay athletes in pro sports who are on the verge of coming out publicly.

In an article about the recent rape trial involving football players at Steubenville High School in Ohio, Zirin pointed to “the bond between jock culture and rape culture.”

He told the Rag Radio audience: “I think that there is a connection. I think that men’s sports, with its combination of hero worship, of an emphasis on team and of men looking out for each other, and oftentimes looking at women as the spoils of being an athlete, can create a culture where women are seen as objects and where women can be seen as something to be taken.”

Zirin says that, “When you have a town like Steubenville, which is a town of 18,000 people, yet the stadium holds 10,000, When you have a school that’s been refurbished... and everybody walks around and says, ‘that’s because of Big Red football, that we got this money,’ and these kids walk around and adults kiss their butts, I think that’s a recipe for disaster.”

The problem, he says, is hero worship. And, as with the scandal at Penn State, “When a football team becomes the emotional, the economic, the cultural, and the social center of a community, the priorities spin out of whack dramatically.”

The worse thing about Stuebenville, he said, was that “there were 50 people who saw what was happening -- boys and girls -- and they all chose to do nothing.” But, he believes, “with the active intervention of coaches, of adults, that you can actually affect and change rape culture.”

There are a lot of positive things happening in sports, Zirin says. “I love the fact that LeBron James and the Miami Heat actually took a stand when Trayvon Martin was murdered by Robert Zimmerman, the self-appointed neighborhood watch leader. They all posed with their hoods on.”

And “the actions of the Phoenix Suns a couple years back in immigration solidarity, in protest of the horrific immigration laws in the state of Arizona, wearing jerseys that said Los Suns.”

One athlete Zirin admires is Houston Texans running back Arian Foster, who is “incredibly literate and erudite.” Zirin begins his latest book with a quote from Foster: “I heard Jim Brown once say the gladiator can’t change Rome. I love Jim Brown. But I disagree. I’ll die trying, my brother.”

And, Dave Zirin reminds us, we remember Muhammed Ali "because the 1960s were happening outside the boxing ring. And without that context of social struggle you’re not gonna have the athletes who can rise up and meet the moment.”

Winner of Sport in Society and Northeastern University School of Journalism's 2011 “Excellence in Sports Journalism” Award, Dave Zirin hosts Sirius XM Radio’s popular weekly show, Edge of Sports Radio. He is also a columnist for SLAM Magazine and the Progressive and his articles frequently appear on The Rag Blog.

Zirin is a regular guest on MSNBC, CNN, Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now!, NPR’s All Things Considered, and other major media outlets. His earlier books include the NAACP Image Award-nominated The John Carlos Story, Bad Sports: How Owners are Ruining the Games We Love, and A People’s History of Sports in the United States, part of Howard Zinn’s "People’s History" Series.

Ron Jacobs wrote at The Rag Blog that “Dave Zirin takes on those people and institutions that have crippled sports in the name of profit and power while championing those athletes and others who have used their name and position to make sports a force for change.”

And New York Magazine's Will Leitch said that "Dave Zirin, as the years go by, sounds less and less like a politically slanted leftist rabble-rouser and more like the only sumbitch who understands what the hell's going on."

Rag Radio has aired since September 2009 on KOOP 91.7-FM, an all-volunteer cooperatively-run community radio station in Austin, Texas. Hosted and produced by Rag Blog editor and long-time alternative journalist Thorne Dreyer, a pioneer of the Sixties underground press movement, Rag Radio is broadcast every Friday from 2-3 p.m. (CDT) on KOOP, and is rebroadcast on Sundays at 10 a.m. (EDT) on WFTE, 90.3-FM in Mt. Cobb, PA, and 105.7-FM in Scranton, PA.

The show is streamed live on the web by both stations and, after broadcast, all Rag Radio shows are posted as podcasts at the Internet Archive.

Rag Radio is produced in association with The Rag Blog, a progressive Internet newsmagazine, and the New Journalism Project, a Texas 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation. Tracey Schulz is the show's engineer and co-producer.

Rag Radio can be contacted at ragradio@koop.org.

Coming up on Rag Radio:
THIS FRIDAY, March 29: "Bronx Butch" poet, performance artist, and memoirist Annie Rachele Lanzillotto.
Friday, April 5: Anti-violence activists John Woods and Claire Wilson James about the issue of guns in schools and on college campuses.
Friday, April 12: Sixties activists and Yippie founders Judy Gumbo Albert and Nancy Kurshan.
Friday, April 19: Amsterdam-based poet John Sinclair, founder of the White Panther Party and former manager of the MC5.

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David Macaray : Twelve Questions for Satirical Icon Paul Krassner

Paul Krassner in the day. Photo by Robert Altman.

Twelve Questions for
satirical icon Paul Krassner

"I think [audiences are] more aware now of the contradictions in mainstream culture, the phony piety that permeates society, the inhumane hypocrisy." -- Paul Krassner

By David Macaray / The Rag Blog / February 27, 2013

To say Paul Krassner has lived an eventful life is an understatement. He invented The Realist, America’s premiere counterculture journal. He co-founded the Youth International Party (Yippies). He was a child violin prodigy who, at age six, was the youngest person ever to perform at Carnegie Hall.

He was a member of Ken Kesey’s Merry Pranksters. He edited Lenny Bruce’s classic, How to Talk Dirty and Influence People. He’s written more than a dozen books, recorded several comedy albums, and, at age 80, is still writing, lecturing, and stirring the pot.

Krassner is unique in that he’s one of those veteran radicals who never came in from the cold, never cashed in his chips, and was never co-opted by the mainstream media. This was partly because he didn’t seek their approval, and partly because he wasn’t considered "domesticated" enough to be embraced. As testimony to his wit and sensibilities, he’s the only person to have won both a Playboy magazine satire prize, and a Feminist Party Media Workshop award for journalism.

1. What’s it like being 80 years old?

Well, I’m more aware that it’s one more decade closer to my death, and my priorities keep falling into place. And in order to keep myself, literally, from falling into place -- stemming from a police beating in 1979, when I got caught in a post-verdict riot after covering the trial of Dan White, who was sentenced to seven years for the assassination of San Francisco Mayor George Moscone and Supervisor Harvey Milk -- I now walk around with a cane, and when I go anywhere I use a walker.

Otherwise, I seem to be in good health. I owe my longevity to never taking any legal drugs. Although, I did take an aspirin last month. I didn’t have a headache or anything, it was just at a party, and the host was passing around a plate full of aspirins. It was just a kind of social ingestion. You know, peer pressure.


2. What do you think the result would be if all 50 states legalized marijuana?

Allow me to quote Ken Kesey’s response when I asked, “Do you see the legalization of grass as any sort of panacea?” “The legalization of grass,” he said, “would do absolutely nothing for our standard of living, or our military supremacy, or even our problem of high school dropouts. It could do nothing for this country except mellow it, and that’s not a panacea, that’s downright subversive.


3. How do you feel about Medicare?

It’s worked for me until now. All I know is that my doctor and the doctors of two friends, each with a different doctor, were told that Medicare alone would not be accepted any more. The unstated reason is that an HMO supplement plan will pay the doctor a monthly sum per patient whether or not they come in for medical help. So the doctors and the insurance companies benefit from this plan. And the patient becomes a pawn in the game.


4. Why did you title your memoir Confessions of a Raving, Unconfined Nut?

After Life magazine published a profile of me in 1968, an FBI agent sent a poison-pen letter stating, “To classify Krassner as some sort of social rebel is far too cute. He’s a nut, a raving, unconfined nut.” Even if that were true, it’s not what taxpayers provide funding for the FBI to do. So when I wrote my autobiography, I decided that the agent’s words would serve as a more appropriate title than Yay for Me.


5. The FBI’s tactics during this period are so frightening, they almost defy belief. What was the Bureau’s main beef with you?

I guess they perceived me as a threat to the status quo. But I perceived them as a threat to my life. In 1969, they produced a Wanted poster featuring a large swastika and the headline "LAMPSHADES! LAMPSHADES! LAMPSHADES!" Inside the four square spaces of the swastika were photos of Yippie co-founders Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin and me, and Mark Rudd of SDS. The text warned that “the only solution to Negro problems in America would be the elimination of the Jews. May we suggest the following order of elimination? (After all, we’ve been this way before.) All Jews connected with the Establishment. All Jews connected with Jews connected with the Establishment. All Jews connected with those immediately above. All Jews except those in the Movement. All Jews in the Movement except those who dye their skin black. All Jews (look out, Jerry, Abbie, Mark and Paul)!”

My FBI files indicate that the leaflet was approved by J. Edgar Hoover’s top two aides in Washington D.C.: “Authority was granted to prepare and distribute on an anonymous basis to selected individuals and organizations in the New Left the leaflet submitted. Assure that all necessary precautions are taken to protect the Bureau as the source of these leaflets. NY suggested a leaflet containing pictures of several New Left leaders who are Jewish. This leaflet suggests facetiously the elimination of these leaders. NY’s proposal would create further ill feeling between the New Left and the black nationalist movement.”

And, of course, if some overly militant black nationalist had obtained that flyer and eliminated one of those New Left leaders who was Jewish, the FBI’s bureaucratic ass would be covered. “We said it was a facetious suggestion, didn’t we?”


6. Given that you were at the forefront of the tumultuous Sixties, what comparisons between then and now can you make? How were the Yippies and Occupy movement similar/different?

Image from Hollywood Progressive.

We had to perform stunts to get media coverage. A group of us went to the New York Stock Exchange and threw $200 worth of singles onto the floor below, where shouts of “Pork Bellies! Pork Bellies!” suddenly morphed into Diving for Dollars. This was followed by a press conference about the connection between capitalism and war. And now, an Occupy placard, “Wall Street Is War Street,” gave me a strong sense of continuity.

The evolution of technology has changed the way protests are organized. The Yippies had to use messy mimeograph machines to print out flyers that had to be folded and stuffed into envelopes, licked, addressed, stamped and mailed. The Internet -- and social media such as Facebook and Twitter -- have enabled Occupiers to inexpensively reach countless people immediately.


7. Despite the obvious limitations of our traditional two-party system, who are some of your all-time favorite and least favorite politicians?

Favorites: Bernie Sanders, Barney Frank, Dennis Kucinich. Least favorites: Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon, George W. Bush.


8. Obviously, it’s way too early, but if you had to bet $100, who do you see as the Democratic and Republican candidates in 2016? 

Hillary Clinton and Chris Christie.


9. What inspired your infamous FUCK COMMUNISM! poster?

Mad magazine art director and Realist columnist John Francis Putnam wanted to give me a housewarming gift in 1963. He had designed the word FUCK in red-white-and-blue lettering emblazoned with stars and stripes. Now he needed a second word, a noun that would serve as an appropriate object for that verb. He suggested AMERICA, but that didn't seem right to me. It certainly wasn't an accurate representation of my feelings. I was well aware that I probably couldn't publish The Realist in any other country. Besides, a poster saying FUCK AMERICA! lacked a certain sense of irony.

There was at that time a severe anti-Communist hysteria burgeoning throughout the land. The attorney general of Arizona rejected the Communist Party's request for a place on the ballot because state law “prohibits official representation” for Communists and, in addition, “The subversive nature of your organization is even more clearly designated by the fact that you do not even include your Zip Code.”

Alvin Dark, manager of the Giants, announced that “Any pitcher who throws at a batter and deliberately tries to hit him is a Communist.” And singer Pat Boone declared at the Greater New York Anti-Communism Rally in Madison Square Garden, “I would rather see my four daughters shot before my eyes than have them grow up in a Communist United States. I would rather see those kids blown into Heaven than taught into Hell by the Communists.”

So I suggested COMMUNISM for the second word, since the usual correlation between conservatism and prudishness would provide the incongruity that was missing. Putnam designed the word COMMUNISM in red lettering emblazoned with hammers and sickles. Then he presented me with a patriotic poster which now proudly proclaimed FUCK COMMUNISM! -- suitable for framing.


10. Also, I have to ask about your controversial Disneyland Memorial Orgy poster. How did that come about?

When Walt Disney died in December 1966, it occurred to me that he had served as the Creator of this whole stable of imaginary characters who were now mourning in a state of suspended animation. Disney had been their Intelligent Designer, and had repressed all their baser instincts. But now that he had departed, they could finally shed their cumulative inhibitions and participate together in an unspeakable sexual binge to signify the crumbling of an empire.

So, I contacted Wally Wood, who had illustrated the first script I wrote for Mad, and I told him my notion of a memorial orgy at Disneyland. He fulfilled that assignment with a magnificently degenerate montage, unleashing those characters’ collective libido and demystified an entire genre in the process. I published it as a black-and-white two-page centerspread, which was so popular that I re-published it as a poster. In 2005, a new, digitally colored edition of the original artwork in authentic Disney colors (you can see it at paulkrassner.com) was done by a former Disney employee who prefers to remain anonymous.


11. Having done stand-up comedy for more than 50 years, how have your audiences changed?

I think they’re more aware now of the contradictions in mainstream culture, the phony piety that permeates society, the inhumane hypocrisy. And I’ve evolved right along with them. Performing, for me, has always been a two-way street. English is my second language. Laughter is my first.


12. And finally, what are you working on currently?

I'm writing my long-awaited (by me) first novel, about a contemporary Lenny Bruce-type performer. I'm also compiling a collection, The Best of Paul Krassner: 50 Years of Investigative Satire. And I'm gathering up my archives -- translation: all the crap in my garage -- for some lucky university.

[David Macaray, a Los Angeles playwright and author (It's Never Been Easy: Essays on Modern Labor), is a former labor union rep.] 

Find articles by and about Paul Krassner on The Rag Blog and listen to Thorne Dreyer's three Rag Radio interviews with Paul Krassner.

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