On Monday, April 5, 2004 at 11:28:28 PM UTC-4, nobody wrote:
> August 4, 1966
> OBITUARY
> Lenny Bruce, Uninhibited Comic,
> Found Dead in Hollywood Home
> Special to THE NEW YORK TIMES
> Hollyweird, Aug. 3 (AP)--Lenny Bruce,
> the controversial nightclub comedian
> whose acts were sprinkled with four-letter
> words and pungent social satire, died
> tonight in his home on Hollywood Boulevard.
> He was 40 years old.
> The police said narcotics paraphernalia
> were found near his half-clad body, and
> the coroner's office listed an overdose of
> narcotics as probable cause of death. An
> autopsy will be performed tomorrow.
> Mr. Bruce's real name was Leonard Alfred
> Schneider and he was born in Mineola, L. I.
> His parents were divorced when he was 5
> years old, and he went to live with relatives.
> He entered the Navy at the age of 16, and
> was discharged in 1946. He then took on
> the various jobs that sustained him until
> he came to Hollywood to study acting
> under the G.I. Bill.
> He landed his first job as a comic in a
> Brooklyn nightspot. In Baltimore he met
> and married Honey Harlow, a striptease
> dancer. They were divorced in 1957.
> Meantime, he had appeared on the
> Arthur Godfrey Show and gained something
> of a national reputation. He then returned
> to Hollywood, where he worked at nightclubs
> and on a local television show.
> Last October the United States District Court
> in San Francisco, in support of a bankruptcy
> action, declared him a pauper.
> 'Radically Relevant'
> There were those who listened to
> Lenny Bruce's series of staccato jokes
> on religion, motherhood, politics and
> the law, carefully embellished with
> scatology, who agreed with one estimate
> that he was "the most radically relevant
> of all contemporary social satirists."
> There were others who said he was "obscene."
> Whatever his significance, Lenny Bruce was
> controversial.
> Since he first attracted public attention about
> six years ago, he had angered and amused
> people here and abroad with his biting, sardonic,
> introspective free-form patter that often was
> a form of shock therapy for his listeners.
> He was denounced in Sydney, Australia, for
> what was called a blasphemous account of
> the Crucifixion and a steady stream of dirty
> words, and his show closed the day after it
> opened.
> He was arrested by the police in April, 1964,
> after an appearance in a Greenwich Village
> nightclub and later convicted for giving an
> obscene performance. But nearly 100 persons
> prominent in the arts and other fields, including
> Prof. Lionel Trilling of Columbia, Norman Mailer,
> James Jones, Robert Lowell, and Dr. Reinhold
> Neibuhr, rallied to his defense and signed a
> statement that described him as a social
> satirist "in the tradition of Swift, Rabelais
> and Twain. (my note: and John Lennon)"
> His controversial stage performances at first
> attracted big audiences, but later his
> financial rewards dwindled. He once noted
> that in 1960, before he was ever taken to
> court, he had earned $108,000, but in 1964
> he expected to earn only $6,000.
> A lean, intense man, Mr. Bruce regarded the
> nightclub stage as "the last frontier" of
> uninhibited entertainment. Although he
> seemed to be doing his utmost at times
> to antagonize his audiences, he also
> displayed an air of morality beneath his
> brashness that some felt made his lapses
> in taste often forgiveable and sometimes necessary.
> He became known as one of the early "sick"
> comedians because he often carried his
> sharp comments to their naked and personal
> conclusion. Sanctity was hardly a word he knew.
> He even had an unkind word for Smoky the Bear.
> True, Smoky doesn't set forest fires, Mr.
> Bruce said, but he eats Boy Scouts for their hats.
> He would express relief at what he said was a
> trend of "people leaving the church and going
> back to God."
> Always on familiar terms with history and
> psychology, Mr. Bruce would illustrate his
> concern with integration with the example
> of the early Romans, who thought there was
> "something dirty" about the Christians. He
> had one Roman ask another:
> "Would you want your sister to marry one?"
> His concern with issues of the day
> was more than an onstage feeling.
> He once noted:
> "I was just thinking this morning that
> I'd never slept over at a colored person's
> house. I've never had dinner in a Negro
> home. There's a big foreign country in
> my country that I know very little about.
> And more than that, when whites talk
> about riots, we really lose our perspective
> completely. A man from Mars could see
> what's really happening-- convicts rioting
> in a corrupt prison."
> His humor on the stage rarely evoked a
> comfortable belly laugh. It required concentration,
> and then often produced a wry smile and perhaps
> a fighting gleam in the eye. There were also spells
> of total confusion as Mr. Bruce rambled in a
> stream-of- consciousness fashion.
> The many adults who found his humor obscene
> agreed with two Criminal Court judges here who
> found in 1964 that Mr. Bruce's performances were
> "patently offensive to the average person in the
> community, as judged by present-day standards."
> In addition to his several arrests for narcotics and
> obscenity, the comedian was deported from Britain
> three years ago, got back in by way of Ireland and
> was deported again.
> His autobiography was published in 1965. It was
> titled, "How to Talk Dirty and Influence People."
> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
> "... but you're still fucking peasants as far as eye can see"
> Lennon 1940-1980

What does any of this have to do with Goldman?