Paul Krassner reading at Skylight books in LA, September 15, 2009

Boing Boing patron saint Paul Krassner is reading from his new book, Who's To Say What's Obscene?: Politics, Culture and Comedy In America Today, at Skylight Books on Tuesday, September 15, 2009 at 7:30 pm.

His new collection of essays is Who's To Say What's Obscene?: Politics, Culture and Comedy In America Today (City Lights Books) and it's a hoot, covering The War on (Some) Drugs, the counterculture (which Paul helped kick-start -- Google "Krassner The Realist" and "Yippies"), dead icons/friends like Carlin and Vonnegut, censorship and his own take on the history of satire.

Previously:

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

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Krassner FTW!
technogeek

Continuing the digression: I wish I still had my copy of that poster. It’s a great illustration of the fact that copyright and trademark permit direct satire — even fairly vicious satire — but wouldn’t allow a respectful homage without getting explicit permission.

It really is safer for most of us to portray Mickey as a dope fiend than to show him as his usual cheerful self.
Anonymous

Krassner is great. I heard a memorable story from him at the UCLA Festival of Books about 10 years ago…he printed a poster reading FUCK COMMUNISM in the Realist, and someone at a college somewhere printed out the poster and held it up in a photo to be included in their yearbook. The yearbook editors clearly couldn’t let that kind of language in, so they whited out the f-word…leaving a photo of a bunch of smiling students holding up a sign simply reading COMMUNISM. That *definitely* couldn’t go in the yearbook, so the yearbook ran the photo with a blank sign.

The story might well be apocryphal, but it’s nonetheless entertaining.
buddy66

He was a Very Important Person fifty years ago. We really looked forward to The Realist in the mailbox. It was a tough time for rebels. People were getting busted for far less shit than Paul did, but he soldiered on. He wrote the check for a lot we take for granted. Hail, P.K.!