House Oversight — Estate records
HOUSE_OVERSIGHT_023638
Bystander #4 JAN 17
- Pages
- 6
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Text as released
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a polite interview “Skin So Thin, It’s Inside Out” Ethan Persoff talks with Paul Krassner about running The Realist, hacking The New York Times Bestseller list, and that “true, extraordinary liar,” Donald Trump. In the late Fifties, three things radically changed the course of American comedy: Lenny Bruce, The Second City, and The Realist. From its first issue in the Spring of 1958, Paul Krassner’s iconoclastic “journal of freethought and satire” created a comedic template that is still being followed today; its mix of fact and intelligent opinion delivered with a mordant, knowing skepticism, is as current as John Oliver and as omnipresent as the entire internet. But you don’t hear much about The Realist these days — it’s the fate of truly seminal sources to seem inevitable, when in fact they reshaped the world in their own image. Fortunately, in 2006 Krassner teamed with archivist/comic artist Ethan Persoff on The Realist Archive Project (http:// www.ep.tc/realist/), a free online repository of every issue of the magazine from its 43-year run. They recently collaborated again on a deluxe coffee table book, The Realist Cartoons, published by Fantagraphics. The election of Donald Trump seemed to be a particularly Krassnerian moment, so I asked Ethan to call Paul and ask a few leading questions. — MG ETHAN PERSOFF: Paul, what’s your opinion of Trump? PAUL KRASSNER: Where to begin? Personally, for me, it goes back to when George Bush won the presidency in 2000. That was due to the electoral college, even though Al Gore had won the popular vote. That same time, Hillary Clinton was elected Senator. She announced, publicly, the first thing she was going to do was get rid of the electoral college. Years later, I was doing a column for The New York Press, and I sent Clinton a letter asking her about the status of her promise. She didn’t reply. During the campaign, Trump called Clinton a crook — EP: Right, “Lock her up”. PK: —he called her a crooked businessperson. But that […]