but it takes far too much time considering thoughts to have to then consider whether or not to venture them. Sheez, talk about your operation mind crimes!
Where’s Lenny Bruce when we need him?
Bruce also dealt with race issues: Dick Gregory, a black comedian of the times, saw Bruce’s show once. On stage, Bruce peered into the audience: “Are there any niggers here tonight?” he asked, with matter-of-fact candor. Bruce then rattled off a string of ethnic insults, trying to defuse brutal hate words like nigger, kike, wop, gook, sheenie and jigaboo. He thus stunned listeners into thinking about unthinkable things. Gregory later said, after the show: “If they don’t kill him or throw him in jail he’s liable to shake up this whole fuckin’ country.”
As it played out, those events transpired. “You say those words enough times,” Bruce exclaimed, “and you break the violence down in them. That way you won’t have some eight-year-old coming crying because someone in the school yard called him a nigger. The point? That the word’s suppression gives it the power, the violence, the viciousness.”
Bruce also tackled the issue of anti-Semitism with a direct left hook: “I am of Semitic background…I assume I’m Jewish. Now, a Jew, dictionary style, is one who descended from the ancient tribes of Judea or one who is regarded to have descended from that tribe. But you and I know what a Jew is: "ONE WHO KILLED OUR LORD!”
The time came to shut this guy up.
The authorities swooped in to shut the mouth of the dirty comic. The First Amendment was under attack. Bruce fought like a Christian tossed to the lions. "I have a right to say the things I'm saying, I'm not hurting anybody. They're just words."
But the issue here is not if one agrees with the words of Lenny Bruce—but to fight to the death his right to say them. The First Amendment is here to protect even the most so-called “offensive” words—-for if we all agreed and loved everything uttered and heard, there would be no need for the First Amendment! Without freedom of speech, we might as well fold tent and forget about this culture. Are we to ignore the Lenny Bruce story and toss him off as a mere "dirty comic" from the by-gone age of 1950s America?
In the end, it was Lenny Bruce who was judging us: “I’m not a comedian. And I’m not sick,” Bruce cried out during one of his many trials. “The world is sick and I’m the doctor. I’m a surgeon with a scalpel for false values.”
http://solohq.solopassion.com/Objectivism101/MisbegottenNotionsMain.shtml
[& speaking of Operation Mind Crime. Excellent concept album; not TRIAGE or The Wall or Wish You Were Here or Pros & Cons of Hitchhiking or Radio KAOS or Dark Side of the Moon or Animals or Amused To Death or even A Momentary Lapse of Reason, or Rush•2112 for that matter…but a heady headphone listen nonetheless. Although the concert, which I was given the tickets to (so who’s bitching really), was an exactly two hour to the minute, every note & every stage [block] movement a means to an end, corporate cash cow, be there & be excellent, get in get out and do it ASAP affair. Period. But NOW, because of fackin’ Mick, I’m looking to get me hands on OMCII, which I didn’t even know existed, …because who the fck really cares what ever happened to Queensryche, just…to follow the story. Something like m’ sons & I will be @ the Cinemark on Dec. 25th to see Rocky Balboa; jus because we gota know the rest of the story. I know, …we’re pitiful, but I was in 6th grade in ’76 and that flick, ROCKY, made a profound impression on me (Saw two movies in a theatre, just my dad & me, Rocky was one of them. …Funny humans.]
Be Well Green Mountain,
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