2 Jews from NY promoting themselves. Nobody cared

DavidVincent: 2 Jews from NY promoting themselves. Nobody cared

Therion: According to Time magazine, Hoffman asked for a permit to levitate the Pentagon three hundred feet off the ground.

A General Services Administrator generously gave permission to "raise the building a maximum of ten feet."



We're going for 500 feet. And you can't stop us.

/or we'll just "bust" some clouds

Excellent.

coco ebert: zeronewbury: No. The drugs are better now, but the creativity of those making political theatre was much better.

Abbie Hoffman was bonkers but the guy had some amazing spirit.

You know, I met him sometime in the mid-eighties when he was touring in a debate with Jerry Rubin and he seemed pretty damn normal to me. Nice guy, too. Very interesting; really cool. Floored me when he killed himself a few years later.

We could use some guys like Abbie Hoffman around these days.

abb3w: zeronewbury: No. The drugs are better now, but the creativity of those making political theatre was much better.

Bipolar disorder still has its ups and its downs.

That's manically depressing.

Hmmm, just found this in the wiki:

-----------------

At Woodstock in 1969, Hoffman reportedly interrupted The Who's performance to attempt to speak against the jailing of John Sinclair of the White Panther Party. He grabbed a microphone and yelled, "I think this is a pile of shiat while John Sinclair rots in prison ..." The Who's guitarist, Pete Townshend, was adjusting his amplifier between songs and turned to look at Hoffman over his right shoulder. Townshend ran with his Gibson SG and rammed it into the middle of Hoffman's upper back. Hoffman turned with mouth gaping, back arched, with one hand trying to reach the injury as Townshend, disgruntled and yelling "fark off! fark off my farking stage,"[16] put a hand in Hoffman's face and shoved him backwards to stage right. Townshend then said, "I can dig it." The rest of the band looked at one another, not sure what was going to happen next. Townshend, frustrated by the interruption, windmilled into the next song. The band regained composure and followed. A couple minutes later, Townshend yelled "The next person that walks on stage is gonna get farking killed, alright? You can laugh, I mean it!" After that song, Townshend walked over to Hoffman, who was sitting on the right hand side of the stage with his arms around his knees. Townshend leaned over and said something to him, and gave him a smack in the head. Townshend later said that while he actually agreed with Hoffman on Sinclair's imprisonment, he would have knocked him offstage regardless of the content of his message, given that Hoffman had violated the "sanctity of the stage," i.e., the right of the band to perform uninterrupted by distractions not relevant to the actual show. The incident took place during a camera change, and was not captured on film. The audio of this incident, however, can be heard on the The Who's box set, Thirty Years of Maximum R&B (Disc 2, Track 20, "Abbie Hoffman Incident").
In his autobiography, Soon To Be A Major Motion Picture, Hoffman wrote that the incident played out like this:
If you ever heard about me in connection with the festival it was not for playing Florence Nightingale to the flower children. What you heard was the following: "Oh, him, yeah, didn't he grab the microphone, try to make a speech when Peter Townshend cracked him over the head with his guitar?" I've seen countless references to the incident, even a mammoth mural of the scene. What I've failed to find was a single photo of the incident. Why? Because it didn't really happen.
I grabbed the microphone all right and made a little speech about John Sinclair, who had just been sentenced to ten years in the Michigan State Penitentiary for giving two joints of grass to two undercover cops, and how we should take the strength we had at Woodstock home to free our brothers and sisters in jail. Something like that. Townshend, who had been tuning up, turned around and bumped into me. A nonincident really. Hundreds of photos and miles of film exist depicting the events on that stage, but none of this much-talked about scene.
In Woodstock Nation, Hoffman mentions the incident, and says he was on a bad LSD trip at the time. Joe Shea, then a reporter for the Times Herald-Record, a Dow Jones-Ottaway newspaper that covered the event on-site, said he saw the incident. He recalled that Hoffman was actually hit in the back of the head by Townshend's guitar and toppled directly into the pit in front of the stage. He does not recall any "shove" from Townshend, and discounts both men's accounts.

----------------------

No matter what the truth is, it sounds like he was sort of a douche regardless. Of course, so was Ginsberg according to many accounts. One of these days liberals will rally around a strong voice bellowed by someone who isn't an unrealistic and unpredictable asshole. Granted, you can ask the same thing of the conservative movement. You retards aren't exactly lighting up MENSA meetings with your Palin bus tours.

Was briefly passing by the "Occupy" movement in my city and while I can't fairly form an opinion (was en route to a gig), I was sort of disheartened by all the ways I saw how Fox and Friends could easily dismiss the protesters based on personal attacks. I guess what I'm saying is that I really hate hippies and fat emo chicks.

There is no try, there is only do or do not....

Link (new window)
"Get the fark off my stage"

They should have tried to cast along the already built pentagram as opposed to against it. Noob mistake.

cc_rider: We could use some guys like Abbie Hoffman around these days.

Fark Abby Hoffman! He's the son of a biatch who decided to turn the demonstrations at the 1968 Democratic Convention into a riot. He wanted the cops to kick the shiat out of everyone on live TV so it would make the people see how corrupt the system was and help bring about change. He made things worse. He created the image that right-wingers still use to this day to discredit any protests by people on the left, or young people. shiat, he's part of the reason Nixon (you dolt!) got elected in the first place.

Orange Sunshine FTW!

cc_rider: We could use some guys like Abbie Hoffman around these days.

No. We don't. Hoffman's greatest accomplishment was self-promotion. Ginsberg, on the other hand, was a genius. I reread "Howl" a few weeks back and was struck by how he managed to convey the hopelessness and despair of a generation - which was the beat, not the hippie, generation.

Compare this:

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by
madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn
looking for an angry fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly
connection to the starry dynamo in the machin-
ery of night,
who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat
up smoking in the supernatural darkness of
cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities
contemplating jazz,

to this:

All day all week

Folks have Occupied Wall Street

Because the banks have made it impossible for y'all to occupy y'alls streets

And y'all can go on Facebook and complain to y'alls peeps

But they flip you the bird

While y'all tweet

Y'all keep

On investing and watching those shares dropping

Sooner than later I'm guessing they'll be watching us share cropping.


I guess we can blame No Child Left Behind.

Although, to his credit. Hoffman did make a good point when he wrote ""Revolution is not something fixed in ideology, nor is it something fashioned to a particular decade. It is a perpetual process embedded in the human spirit."

zeronewbury: No. The drugs are better now, but the creativity of those making political theatre was much better.

And shutting down the war that was so precious to the rotten US elites and the rotten US military was quite an amazing feat.

How can a group of dirty hippies win against the most powerful forces on the planet ? It makes it look like the war mongers are lame or the hippies are really smart.

FredaDeStilleto: cc_rider: We could use some guys like Abbie Hoffman around these days.

No. We don't. Hoffman's greatest accomplishment was self-promotion.

________________________________________

I'd suggest you listen to some of the reruns of "Radio Unameable". You obviously don't know shiat about Hoffman.

Bob16: FredaDeStilleto: cc_rider: We could use some guys like Abbie Hoffman around these days.

No. We don't. Hoffman's greatest accomplishment was self-promotion.

________________________________________

I'd suggest you listen to some of the reruns of "Radio Unameable". You obviously don't know shiat about Hoffman.

Yeah. I do. Born in the '50's and went through the whole protest thing. Hoffman was divisive and no hero. He was a self aggrandizing attention whore who was more concerned about promoting himself than any cause. Had he been born 20 years later, he would have worked for Goldman Sachs. He was a snake oil salesman who grabbed onto the anti-war movement with fervor because it suited his desire for fame.

Hector Remarkable: coco ebert: zeronewbury: No. The drugs are better now, but the creativity of those making political theatre was much better.

Abbie Hoffman was bonkers but the guy had some amazing spirit.

You know, I met him sometime in the mid-eighties when he was touring in a debate with Jerry Rubin and he seemed pretty damn normal to me. Nice guy, too. Very interesting; really cool. Floored me when he killed himself a few years later.

Really? A guy who thought he could levitate a building killed himself and you were suprised?

b>FredaDeStilleto: cc_rider: We could use some guys like Abbie Hoffman around these days.

No. We don't. Hoffman's greatest accomplishment was self-promotion. Ginsberg, on the other hand, was a genius. I reread "Howl" a few weeks back and was struck by how he managed to convey the hopelessness and despair of a generation - which was the beat, not the hippie, generation.

Compare this:

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by
madness, starving hysterical naked,
dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn
looking for an angry fix,
angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly
connection to the starry dynamo in the machin-
ery of night,
who poverty and tatters and hollow-eyed and high sat
up smoking in the supernatural darkness of
cold-water flats floating across the tops of cities
contemplating jazz,

to this:

All day all week

Folks have Occupied Wall Street

Because the banks have made it impossible for y'all to occupy y'alls streets

And y'all can go on Facebook and complain to y'alls peeps

But they flip you the bird

While y'all tweet

Y'all keep

On investing and watching those shares dropping

Sooner than later I'm guessing they'll be watching us share cropping.


I guess we can blame No Child Left Behind.

Although, to his credit. Hoffman did make a good point when he wrote ""Revolution is not something fixed in ideology, nor is it something fashioned to a particular decade. It is a perpetual process embedded in the human spirit."

If he was still around, I'd like to think that the last couple generations may not have gotten this complacent and let the rot escalate so far. He may have enjoyed the spotlight on occasion, but the things he spoke for, he really believed in. He sure didn't get fat and rich off his escapades.

Did he stir up trouble? Yes, he did. Abbie was no saint, and he could often be a real pain in the ass. However, he also had a way of keeping people honest and forcing them to pay attention. That is why we could use some people like Abbie around these days.

I like Ginsberg too He was a completely different personality, no less brilliant. He may well be rolling in his grave over that awful doggerel from wherever. It's sad that most kids today could probably name every dumb-ass on The Jersey Shore, and have never read "Howl" in it's entirety.


Just for fun, some selected transcripts from the Chicago 7 trial: Link (new window)

cc_rider:

Did he stir up trouble? Yes, he did. Abbie was no saint, and he could often be a real pain in the ass. However, he also had a way of keeping people honest and forcing them to pay attention. That is why we could use some people like Abbie around these days.



Just for fun, some selected transcripts from the Chicago 7 trial: Link (new window)

Thanks for the link. And I see your point. While OWS can be lauded for the overall concept, the lack of having figureheads personifying the movement is both beneficial and detrimental to sustaining the movement. Right now, it's a tabla rasa for many people. While the overriding message is the out of control growth of coporatocracy (and the consequential suffocation of Everyman's ability to do more than sustain), the long term viability is questionable because of the lack of a visible focal point.

While the protests have proven that people are finally waking from their long slumber of complacency, someone or some people need to step forward and be as inyourface as Hoffman and his ilk. But that may not be possible: perhaps the sense of individuality has been destroyed and a collective consciousness has replaced it.

dickfreckle: No matter what the truth is, it sounds like he was sort of a douche regardless.

His story is bullshiat. There is no film because he happened to do it right as the film crews were reloading their cameras, and it was over before a lot of people realized what was happening. Pete hit him on purpose and told him go "get off my farking stage" and there is audio to prove that. Everyone other than Abby who was near the stage says it happened.

He also was so farked up he told a promoter there was a man with a gun under the stage who wanted to kill people and they actually believed him until his story started to fall apart and they realized how messed up he was.

The guy had his heart in the right place, but his disease and his ego offset a lot of the good in him.

I remember my school instructor being very upset that I had a copy of Steal This Book with me.

I was in the 5^th grade and the biatch called my mother. I've distrusted authority figures since.

/the book actually belonged to my Mom... she was a middle manager at AT&T and had it from professional interest in the methods for defrauding the phone company that were in it.

The drugs were better back then. The $15 z of Mexi-schwag was just a baseline. There were better weeds to be had. Where's your methaqualone kids? As a poster mentioned earlier, where's your orange sunshine? What we oldfags called a hit nippers of today would regard as at least a ten-strip if not the better half of a sheet, maybe the first chapter od a book.

And DOM(STP), I know you ain't holdin'!

2011 - 40 = 1969?

MattieIce: 2011 - 40 = 1969?

No.

Forty four years ago this Friday, on October 21, 1967

You can hear this on the The Fugs Tenderness Junction album. It also has the great song Wet Dream also.

dickfreckle: The Who's guitarist, Pete Townshend, was adjusting his amplifier between songs and turned to look at Hoffman over his right shoulder. Townshend ran with his Gibson SG and rammed it into the middle of Hoffman's upper back...



"Who was that?"

"Abbie someone"

I'll come back on friday when this link should have been posted.

I actually knew Abbie Hoffman, so I'll put this link to a taped interview I did with him here (new window)

DavidVincent: 2 Jews from NY promoting themselves. Nobody cared

and today we have Pam Gellar and Joe Farrah. 2 looney tune Jewish conspiracy theorists. That sad thing is these cats aren't on drugs.

dickfreckle: Hmmm, just found this in the wiki:

Good lord, I hate the Who.

I understand not stepping on musicians, but ---


The Who.

Amos Quito: dickfreckle: The Who's guitarist, Pete Townshend, was adjusting his amplifier between songs and turned to look at Hoffman over his right shoulder. Townshend ran with his Gibson SG and rammed it into the middle of Hoffman's upper back...

[i.thisislondon.co.uk image 415x334]

"Who was that?"

"Abbie someone"

I knew Stew Albert who had great stories of his time with Abbie, Jerry Rubin, etc. Unfortunately he passed on a few years ago.
RIP

Btw - don't trash The Who!

BurnShrike: MattieIce: 2011 - 40 = 1969?

No.

Forty four years ago this Friday, on October 21, 1967

Much like the drugs, math was better then.

signaljammer: The drugs were better back then. The $15 z lid of Mexi-schwag was just a baseline. There were better weeds to be had. Where's your methaqualone kids? As a poster mentioned earlier, where's your orange sunshine? What we oldfags called a hit nippers of today would regard as at least a ten-strip if not the better half of a sheet, maybe the first chapter od a book.

Had to.

zeronewbury: No. The drugs are better now, but the creativity of those making political theatre was much better.

I really think if the hippies had been more successful with their theatrics, things like even Occupy Wall Street would be even more colorful. Bear in mind there is a deliberate effort NOT to scare away the squares within OWS (whether or not it is successful depends on how much you want to troll the thread I suppose) due in large part to how hippies were dismissed in the 1960s.

Bob16: zeronewbury: No. The drugs are better now, but the creativity of those making political theatre was much better.

And shutting down the war that was so precious to the rotten US elites and the rotten US military was quite an amazing feat.

How can a group of dirty hippies win against the most powerful forces on the planet ? It makes it look like the war mongers are lame or the hippies are really smart.

Do what now? Levitation of the Pentagon was in 1967. End of the Vietnam War, after tens of thousands more U.S. deaths, two elections for Richard Nixon and over a million Vietnamese killed in Nixon's bombing campaigns was in 1973, when the North Vietnamese decided they weren't going to win by fighting us and signed the Paris Peace Accords. Yeah, the dirty hippies really showed the Establishment there.

We didn't lose the Vietnam War militarily, btw. The South Vietnamese did two years after we left. We left it basically a draw, and pulled out. The South Vietnamese army was larger and better equipped than the North, but their leadership, especially on the political side, was for shiat. The only reason the South lost was that the Communists wanted it a lot more.

They should have started practicing levitation with something small, say, a salad fork or glass marble.

Ed Grubermann: cc_rider: We could use some guys like Abbie Hoffman around these days.

Fark Abby Hoffman! He's the son of a biatch who decided to turn the demonstrations at the 1968 Democratic Convention into a riot. He wanted the cops to kick the shiat out of everyone on live TV so it would make the people see how corrupt the system was and help bring about change. He made things worse. He created the image that right-wingers still use to this day to discredit any protests by people on the left, or young people. shiat, he's part of the reason Nixon (you dolt!) got elected in the first place.

Humphrey didn't have a chance in 1968. Indeed, the entire Democratic Party was in shambles.

(Humphrey was maybe the 3rd best candidate, but Johnson quit (and the students hated him, anyway) and RFK was dead. Hell, a good chunk of the rioters wanted McGovern! There's a message that's lost to history -- the students rioted against a civil rights advocate and for a Dixiecrat)

That said, Nixon was probably the best man for the time. Johnson was a more-evil version of Nixon (just as corrupt personally, but half the politician). Humphrey was spineless. RFK was Eli to JFK's Peyton, and a tool of his father in any event. McGovern was McGovern. McCarthy was still around only because Humphrey entered late and RFK was assassinated.

And Nixon was largely the candidate people were looking for. He did end Vietnam, he opened up China and instituted detente with the USSR. He was personally despicable, but succeeded in the political points that the left wanted!

mbillips: We didn't lose the Vietnam War militarily, btw. The South Vietnamese did two years after we left. We left it basically a draw, and pulled out.

Drug-fueled plans to levitate the pentagon are better than religion-fueled plans to level the pentagon

This text is now purple: Hell, a good chunk of the rioters wanted McGovern! There's a message that's lost to history -- the students rioted against a civil rights advocate and for a Dixiecrat

A South Dakota Dixiecrat?