On November 30, fans of 1960s counterculture commemorate what would have been the 80th birthday of the American Jewish activist and anarchist Abbie Hoffman, who died in 1989. Hoffman was a cofounder of the Youth International Party, whose adherents were called Yippies, alongside Jerry Rubin (1938 –1994), Nancy Kurshan (born 1944), and Paul Krassner (born…
Decades before Jon Stewart brought his popular admixture of satire and journalism to the mass media on Comedy Central, the unique hybrid of the two genres could be found regularly in only one very hip and often outrageous media outlet. But Paul Krassner, the self-described “investigative satirist” who pretty much invented the form in his…
Dustin Hoffman as Lenny Bruce in ‘Lenny’ (1974). Courtesy Toronto Jewish Film Festival Nearly 50 years after his landmark Carnegie Hall performance, and 44 years since his drug-related death, Lenny Bruce still has the power to shock. And as long he’s onscreen, it’s impossible to look away from Elan Gale’s Looking for Lenny, a new…
A previously little known, earnest Christian woman running for a high-profile office her first time out confronts derision, scorn and outrage in 2010 thanks to dredged up 14-year-old comments in which she criticized masturbation for its purported role in stoking lust and discouraging intimacy. She’s pummeled, eviscerated, all but left for politically dead. That’s Republican…
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