Krassner, Paul

KRASSNER, PAUL. (1932-2019). A child protégé born to a Brooklyn, New York Jewish family, Krassner played the violin at Carnegie Hall at the age of eight, but gave up music and turned his talents to the written and spoken word. A journalism major in college, he worked at Lyle Stuart’s tabloid, The Independent, wrote for Mad magazine, and performed as a stand-up comedian under the stage name, Paul Maul.

For several decades, Krassner, on stage and in his writings, ridiculed the right and the left, the famous and the notorious, from Richard Nixon and Lyndon Johnson to Eldridge Cleaver of the Black Panther Party to Patty Hearst, the heiress who was kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army. Sexual subjects and vocabulary often played a prominent role in his self-expression.

Early in his work, Krassner came under the influence of Lenny Bruce, the preeminently provocative American satirist in the decades after World War II. Like Bruce but at a younger age, Krassner was shaped by the Golden Age of Jewish comedians, including Sid Caesar, Carl Reiner, Mort Sahl and Mel Brooks. Krassner edited and, according to rumor, also in part ghosted Bruce’s autobiography, How to Talk Dirty and Influence People, its title a parody of Dale Carnegie’s famed self-help book, How to Win Friends and Influence People. (1936).

Krassner founded The Realist in 1958, and published it, with the help of friends, on and off for the next forty-three years. He could count among his authors and artists Norman Mailer, Dick Gregory, Woody Allen, Art Spiegelman and R. Crumb. On the masthead, Krassner identified himself as a “Zen Bastard.” In the pages of the magazine, as a progenitor of the underground press, he crafted a variety of journalism that blended fact and fiction and appealed to readers who didn’t believe what they saw on network TV. In 1966, Krassner published Mad artist Wally Wood’s in-your-face poster, “Disneyland Memorial Orgy,” which depicted Mickey and Minnie Mouse, among other characters from the Magic Kingdom, using illicit drugs and engaged in lewd sexual acts.

Equally outrageous was Krassner’s red-white-and-blue bumper sticker that proclaimed, “FUCK COMMUNISM.” His 1963 essay “The Parts That Were Left Out of the Kennedy Book” suggested that Lyndon Johnson inserted his penis in the wound made by the bullet that punctured the neck of President JFK in Dallas, Texas.

Krassner mocked conspiracies and conspirators, and published conspiracy theories, including those of Mae Brussell, who claimed to have found links between the Mafia, ex-Nazis and the CIA.

An FBI document described Krassner as a “raving, unconfined nut,” a phrase he borrowed and used for his autobiography, Confessions of a Raving, Unconfined Nut: Misadventures in Counter-Culture in which he parodied himself

Along with Jerry Rubin, Abbie Hoffman and Ed Sanders, Krassner helped found the Yippies (later the Youth International Party) who in turn launched a “Festival of Life” in Chicago, during the Democratic National Convention. Under the influence of LSD, Krassner testified for the defendants at the Chicago Conspiracy Trial and later wrote about mind-altering drugs in Psychedelic Trips for the Mind (2001) and Magic Mushrooms and other Highs (2004). An inveterate prankster, he affiliated with the Merry Pranksters and Ken Kesey.

Krassner lampooned figures such as Timothy Leary and Eldridge Cleaver and members of the women’s liberation movement. Feminist, poet and journalist, Robin Morgan, the editor of the anthology Sisterhood is Powerful, denounced Krassner as a sexist in her essay “Goodbye to all that” in which she wrote, “farewell to the memory of his Instant Pussy aerosol-can poster, to his column for the woman-hating men’s magazine Cavalier to his dream of a Rape-In against legislators’ wives.” Krassner received awards from the American Civil Liberties Union and magazines like High Times. Comedian George Carlin said, "The FBI was right, this man is dangerous – and funny; and necessary."

In 1985, Krassner moved to Venice, California, and in 2002 he settled with his wife, Nancy Cain, in Desert Hot Springs where he died at the age of 87. He remains beloved by fans who had come of age with The Realist and whose view of the world was informed by its articles and cartoons.

Bruce, Lenny. How to Talk Dirty and Influence People. Chicago: Playboy, 1965.

Krassner, Paul ed. The Best of the Realist: The 60's Most Outrageously Irreverent Magazine. Philadelphia: Running Press, 1985.

Krassner, Paul. Who's to Say What's Obscene? Politics, Culture and Comedy in America Today. San Francisco: City Lights, 2009.

Morgan, Robin. “Goodbye to All That.” http://blog.fair-use.org/2007/09/29/goodbye-to-all-that-by-robin-morgan-1970/, Accessed August 30, 2020.