Finally, my migraine gone, I get online and what do I see? More endless pope-lytizing. Obviously we are going to have to deal with yet another week of being told how wonderful he was and how he fed the poor and loved the sinners and how progressive he was and how he saved the world and blah blah blah ad nauseam.
So while I'm waiting, and since I've been told to shut up about his lethal policies, I've decided to take this opportunity to mourn someone who was a champion of free speech and, in my opinion, actually did leave a lasting and meritorious legacy.
A man whose work has been compared to that of Mark Twain, whose remarkable life inspired books and films, who was immortalized by Bob Dylan, Paul Simon, John Lennon and R.E.M., to name but a few, and who was also the inspiration for the M*A*S*H character, Corporal Max Klinger.
His name is Lenny Bruce.
Born Leonard Alfred Schneider in Long Island New York
Oct. 13, 1925 - Aug. 3, 1966
Lenny was no saint and no hero, at least not in the traditional sense. He was a man who was persecuted and hounded for years simply because he believed in the first amendment. He battled for the right to free speech until he died, in 1966, alone and penniless, still confident that justice would prevail and he would be acquitted, his conviction in 1964 for obscenity overturned. He would have to wait.
He was eventually pardoned by New York Governor George Pataki on December 23, 2003, almost 40 years later.
I think he deserves more.
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."
— The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution
********************************************************************
From Salon:
Lenny Bruce died for our sins
By Gary Kamiya Aug. 26, 2003
"Comedian Lenny Bruce's legal ordeal is one of the most shameful chapters in the cultural history of postwar America -- a persecution that obsessed Bruce, drained his creative energies, bankrupted him, and allowed the demons that always haunted him to take over. Bruce died of a morphine overdose, but as Vincent Cuccia, one of the New York D.A.'s who prosecuted Bruce's last obscenity case, said, "We drove him into poverty and bankruptcy and then murdered him. We all knew what we were doing. We used the law to kill him." "
http://www.salon.com/opinion/freedom/2003/08/26/lennybruce/index_np.html*********************************************************************
From an op-ed by Paul Krassner in the LA Times on August 4th, 1996
marking the 30th anniversary of Lenny Bruce's death, regarding what happened at Lenny's performance at the Gate of Horn in Chicago:
"Lenny was arrested that night, ostensibly for obscenity. The head of the vice squad later warned the Gate of Horn's manager: "If this man ever uses a four-letter word in this club again, I'm going to pinch you and everyone in here. If he ever speaks against religion, I'm going to pinch you and everyone in here. Do you understand? ... He mocks the pope -- and I'm speaking as a Catholic -- I'm here to tell you your license is in danger."
Chicago had the largest membership in the Roman Catholic Church of any archdiocese in the country. Lenny's jury consisted entirely of Catholics. The judge, the prosecutor and his assistant were Catholic. On Ash Wednesday, the judge removed the spot of ash from his forehead and told the bailiff to instruct the others to follow his lead. The reality of a judge, two prosecutors and 12 jurors, every one with a spot of ash on their foreheads, had all the surrealistic flavor of a Lenny Bruce fantasy.
Lenny was arrested 15 times within two years. "There seems to be a pattern," he said, "that I'm a mad dog and they have to get me no matter what -- the end justifies the means." It was news in Variety that Lenny didn't get arrested one night."
http://www.worldfreeinternet.net/news/nws8.htm********************************************************************
Here are some excerpts from an obituary by Ralph J. Gleason, who
co-founded Rolling Stone:
"Lenny Bruce had an incurable disease. He saw through the pretense, hypocrisy, and paradoxes of our society. All he insisted on was that we meet it straight ahead and not cop out or lie about it. "If something about the human body disgusts you," he said, "complain to the manufacturer." "
"He was my friend and he died, as Phil Spector said, from "an overdose of police." The earth was pushed over his grave by a tractor. The weekend after he died, Paul Simon dedicated a song to Bruce in the huge arena at Forest Hills, Long Island. He died from an overdose of hate and bigotry and an underdose of love and understanding," Simon said. Then he sang "A Most Peculiar Man," a grim song of a lonely death that made a fitting obituary. But like all truly important people, Lenny Bruce gave so much to the world he can't really leave it. It's just Unspeakably sad to know there'll be no more hysterically funny notes in the mail and no more phone calls or mesmerizing shows ending with "Love ya". That’s a good ending- Love ya, Lenny. Love ya."
http://members.aol.com/dcspohr/lenny/obgleas.htm*********************************************************************
Here's what Steve Allen had to say about Lenny:
"Lenny always seemed to me the first of the modern comedians. Before him, Nightclub comedy was limited to a few established formulas. Some comedians did an endless string of jokes - Henny Youngman, Morey Amsterdam, Rodney Dangerfield. Others told funny stories - Danny Thomas, Myron Cohen, Lou Holtz. A third category worked out of a musical context, like Jimmy Durante. But Lenny broke entirely new ground. He commented on the world around him, and, since he had the sensitivity of a philosopher plus a superior intelligence, the things he says were always insightful. Consider the following observation which is typical Bruce: "Show me the average sex maniac, the one that takes your eight-year-old, schtupps her in the parking lot, and then kills her, and I'll show a guy who's had a good religious upbringing. You see, he saw his father or mother always telling his sister to cover up her body, even when she was only six years old. And so he figures, one day I'm going to find out what it is she's coverings and if it's as dirty as my father says I'll kill it." "
http://members.aol.com/dcspohr/lenny/allen.htm********************************************************************
R.I.P. Lenny
And thanks.
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