In Praise of Indecency: The Leading Investigative Satirist Sounds of Hypocrisy, Censorship and Free Expression

admin — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 00:35:00 +0000

This is the first of two books Paul Krassner put out this year and, in my opinion, the better one. What makes In Praise Of Indecency better than Who's to Say What's Obscene? is that it is better organized and its sections are shorter, which seems to help Krassner focus his attention on the subject matter, allow his jokes to be funnier, and help the reader to not get lost.

My one problem with this book, however, is that while Krassner brings up a lot of what appear to be facts, he never cites anything, which caused me to doubt his credibility. This is especially true in instances where the reader is able to find blatant mistakes, such as Krassner's reference to Ashley Dupré, the sex worker who brought down Eliot Spitzer, as "Karen". This type of slip-up caused me to doubt the rest of the facts Krassner brought up to mock, and put a damper on my enjoyment of the book.

Nonetheless, In Praise Of Indecency is funny—with the exception of a shocking and unintentionally depressing section involving a website called crackwhoreconfessions.com. Here, Krassner discusses the content of the site: confessions and videos from actual "crackheads", who all just happen to be women, detailing all of the degrading things they have done for paltry sums of money simply to survive. I had hoped Krassner was joking or even outright making the site up, but after typing the URL into my web browser, I was able to find it. One needed to actually join the site to view anything, so I had to take Krassner's word for the content.

Krassner seems to find nothing in the book indecent, and by the end, I came out feeling like a prude. This is not a book for those with delicate sensibilities, but it's interesting nonetheless.

Written by: Jen Klee, October 10th 2009

Who's to Say What's Obscene?: Politics, Culture, and Comedy in America Today

admin — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 22:30:00 +0000

By Paul Krassner

City Lights Books

I've long been a fan of Paul Krassner's more illustrious friends like Lenny Bruce and Abbie Hoffman, but until now I'd never gotten around to reading Krassner's own work. Who's to Say What's Obscene? appears to be a collection of random essays. I say "appears to be" because for most of the book, I had no idea what was going on.

The stories were interesting, but would just go from one to the next with seemingly no connection. I'd be reading about Don Imus, Michael Richards, and media censorship, and then the next thing I knew, I'd be reading about Walt Disney's death. Breaking the book down into chapters, as Krassner does here, is useless when each chapter is a random collection of essays that aren't even identified as separate pieces, and it left me scrambling. When I complained to my boyfriend, he replied, "That's what happens when you do a lot of drugs," which makes sense, as a lot of the book involves various scenarios where Krassner is about to go on a big interview, but then decides to do mushrooms beforehand to "enhance the experience."

By the middle of the book, I decided to just take each individual piece as it was and stop trying to make sense of everything. Eventually, I found the writing enjoyable. Krassner has lived a very rich life and raises good questions about what is actually obscene in our culture, based on his own opinions and experiences. As is to be expected, Krassner has a very liberal attitude towards most of the issues he raises in his book, like censorship in all its forms (he's against it) and legalizing drugs (he's for it). I do like reading viewpoints I agree with, but at times even I felt that Krassner took his opinions to the extreme.

Who's to Say What's Obscene? is a good book for people with short attention spans and far left-leaning views. Me personally, I'll keep it—but it'll lead a life doomed to the bathroom for short, mentally uninvolved reads, one to two times a day.

Written by: Jen Klee, October 9th 2009