Paul Krassner profile

Mark Frauenfelder 11:21 pm Mon Jun 22, 2009

John Rogers of AP profiled 77-year-old Paul Krassner, co-founder of the Yippies and publisher of The Realist, the newsletter that was a big influence on bOING bOING.

He was once a child music prodigy and in the decades since, Paul Krassner has been everything from political satirist to author, editor, anarchist and an advocate for both peace and pornography.

But the title he may favor is one he found buried in his FBI file.

"To classify Krassner as a social rebel is far too cute," a letter in the file said in response to a favorable magazine interview with the co-founder of the Yippie Party, the group that notoriously disrupted the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago. "He's a nut, a raving, unconfined nut."

So Krassner titled his autobiography "Confessions of a Raving, Unconfined Nut."

"I figured I might as well make use of it," says the author, smiling broadly as he sits in the living room of his modest tract home in this sandy, sagebrush-dotted corner of the Mojave Desert on a scorchingly hot morning.

Paul has a new book coming out, called Who's to Say What's Obscene: Politics, Culture and Comedy in America Today.

Yippie founder Paul Krassner still testing limits

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