Who's to Say What's Obscene?
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In fact, sex therapist Dr. Susan M. Block has featured “The Erotic Obama Fantasies Show” on her program, Radio Suzy. “The dashing young president is making numerous appearances in the erotic dreams and fantasies of many men and women of all races and ethnicities around the world,” she said. “Certainly my own clients are having erotic fantasies about Barack Obama. One of my male clients said, ‘I voted for Obama. I’ve got a black man in my White House, and now I want a black man in my white wife.’ I’ve got clients who are fantasizing about him doing their wives.”
A female listener called in and described her fantasy: “We’re in the Oval Office. I’m wearing some sort of red presidential speech dress which is very elegant, and he’s wearing that dark suit and tie, and I’m sort of ripping it off, so that the buttons are flying all over the Oval Office. And then I sort of bend over that Oval Office desk, and it’s like, you know, a racist stereotype—he’s very well hung. And I’m just doing the Lord’s work. Serving my country.”
If you type “Obama FILF” in the Google box, this question automatically pops up: “Did you mean Obama film?” There actually is a porn flick titled Fathers I’d Like to Fuck. Porn-film critic Roger Pipe points out in his review, “The idea of older guys fucking young chicks in porn isn’t new. It isn’t even a genre, really. It’s just porn.” But there has yet to be an anonymous ad on Craigslist for a Barack Obama lookalike.
Memo to Larry Flynt: “I’m patiently waiting for Hustler Video, the producers of Who’s Nailin’ Paylin, to come out with an appropriate sequel, titled Pornobama.”
Yes, this president will finally become our FILF-in-Chief.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Paul Krassner’s FBI files indicate that after Life magazine published a favorable profile of him, the FBI sent a poison-pen letter to the editor, complaining: “To classify Krassner as a social rebel is far too cute. He’s a nut, a raving, unconfined nut.” “The FBI was right,” said George Carlin. “This man is dangerous—and funny, and necessary.”
When People magazine called Krassner “father of the underground press,” he immediately demanded a paternity test. He published the groundbreaking satirical magazine the Realist from 1958 to 1974, reincarnating it as a newsletter in 1985. “The taboos may have changed,” he wrote, “but irreverence is still our only sacred cow.” The final issue was published in Spring 2001.
His style of personal journalism constantly blurred the line between observer and participant. He interviewed a doctor who performed abortions when it was illegal, then ran an underground abortion referral service. He published material on the psychedelic revolution, then took LSD with Tim Leary, Ram Dass and Ken Kesey, later accompanying Groucho Marx on his first acid trip. He covered the antiwar movement, then co-founded the Yippies with Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin (writing a few animated reenactment scenes for the documentary Chicago 10 four decades later).
He edited Lenny Bruce’s autobiography, How to Talk Dirty and Influence People and, with Lenny’s encouragement, eventually became an award-winning stand-up comic himself, beginning at the Village Gate in 1961. Ten years later—five years after Lenny’s death—Groucho said, “I predict that in time Paul Krassner will wind up as the only live Lenny Bruce.” He was nominated for a 2005 Grammy Award in the Album Notes category for his 5,000-word essay accompanying a 6-CD package, Lenny Bruce: Let the Buyer Beware.
Krassner’s venues have ranged from the New Age Expo to the Skeptics Conference, from a Neo-Pagan Festival to the L.A. County Bar Association, from a Swingers Convention to the Brentwood Bakery, where members of the audience were each given a free pastry of their choice. Over the years, he has built up a cult following that has steadily been edging into mainstream awareness. The New York Times: “He is an expert at ferreting out hypocrisy and absurdism from the more solemn crannies of American culture.” The Los Angeles Times: “He has the uncanny ability to alter your perceptions permanently.” The San Francisco Chronicle: “Krassner is absolutely compelling. He has lived on the edge so long he gets his mail delivered there.”
In 1980, he was head writer for an HBO special satirizing the presidential election campaign starring Ronald Reagan, and a decade later was a writer on Ron Reagan Jr.’s late-night TV talk show. He currently writes columns for High Times and AVN [Adult Video News] Online, and is an occasional contributor to The Nation and the Los Angeles Times. He is updating and expanding his autobiography, Confessions of a Raving, Unconfined Nut: Misadventures in the Counterculture, and working on his first novel.
Krassner is the only person in the world ever to win awards from both Playboy (for satire) and the Feminist Party Media Workshop (for journalism). He received an ACLU Uppie (Upton Sinclair) Award for dedication to freedom of expression. And at the Cannabis Cup in Amsterdam, he was inducted into the Counterculture Hall of Fame—“my ambition,” he claims, “since I was three years old.”
ALSO BY THE AUTHOR
How a Satirical Editor Became a Yippie Conspirator in Ten Easy Years
Best of The Realist EDITOR
Confessions of a Raving Unconfined Nut: Misadventures in the Counterculture
The Winner of the Slow Bicycle Race: The Satirical Writings of Paul Krassner
Sex, Drugs and the Twinkie Murders: 40 Years of Countercultural Journalism
Impolite Interviews
Pot Stories for the Soul EDITOR
Psychedelic Trips for the Mind EDITOR
Magic Mushrooms and Other Highs: From Toad Slime to Ecstasy EDITOR
Murder at the Conspiracy Convention and Other American Absurdities
One Hand Jerking: Reports From an Investigative Satirist
Tales of Tongue Fu
In Praise of Indecency: Dispatches From the Valley of Porn
PRAISE FOR PAUL KRASSNER
“Thanks to Paul Krassner for continuing to be the lobster claw in the tuna casserole of modern America.”
—Tom Robbins
“The FBI was right; this man is dangerous—and funny, and necessary.”
—George Carlin
“Krassner is one of the best minds of his generation to be destroyed by madness, starving, hysterical, naked—but mainly hysterical.”
—Art Spiegelman
“I have been a fan of his since I was a snot-nosed kid, and his words have been a driving force and influence on my life. . . . If you have read his work before, you know the joys that you are in for. If you haven’t, start reading, and consider this your lucky day. For Paul Krassner is an activist, a philosopher, a lunatic and a saint, but most of all he is funny.”
—Lewis Black
“Paul taught me that extreme stylistic accuracy could make even the most bizarre comedic concept credible. . . . He is a unique character on the American landscape. A self-described ‘investigative satirist,’ he straddles the lines between politics, culture, pornography and drugs—in other words, the land where all of us, were we really honest with ourselves, would choose to dwell.”
—Harry Shearer
“Krassner loves ironies, especially stinging ironies that nettle public figures. He would rather savor a piquant irony about a public figure than eat a bowl of fresh strawberries and ice cream.”
—Ken Kesey
“Krassner is absolutely compelling. He has lived on the edge so long he gets his mail delivered there.”
—San Francisco Chronicle
“He is an expert at ferreting out hypocrisy and absurdism from the more solemn crannies of American culture.”
—New York Times
“Krassner has the uncanny ability to alter your perceptions permanently.”
—Los Angeles Times
“I told Krassner one time that his writings made me hopeful. He found this an odd compliment to offer a satirist. I explained that he made supposedly serious matters seem ridiculous, and that this inspired many of his readers to decide for themselves what was ridiculous and what was not. Knowing that there were people doing that, better late than never, made me optimistic
.”
—Kurt Vonnegut