Here's an excerpt from the trial court's unpublished opinion, with this 12-point list of Lenny Bruce Bruce's jokes, awkwardly retold judicial style:
1. Eleanor Roosevelt and her display of "tits." (1st performance; transcript of 3rd performance at p. 27)Bruce received a pardon in 2003. His daughter Kitty Bruce, who was 11 when her father died, said:
2. Jacqueline Kennedy "hauling ass" at the moment of the late President's assassination. (Transcript of 2nd performance at p. 22; transcript of 3rd performance at p. 13)
3. St. Paul giving up "fucking." (1st performance; transcript of 2nd performance at p. 12; transcript of 3rd performance at p. 19)
4. An accident victim-who lost a foot in the accident-who made sexual advances to a nurse, while in the ambulance taking him to the hospital. (1st performance; transcript of 2nd performance at p. 25)
5. "Uncle Willie" discussing the "apples" of a 12-year old girl. (transcript of 2nd performance at p. 20; transcript of 3rd performance at p. 12)
6. Seemingly sexual intimacy with a chicken. (transcript of 2nd performance at p. 25)
7. "Pissing in the sink" and "pissing" from a building's ledge. (transcript of 2nd performance at p. 24; transcript of 3rd performance at p. 15)
8. The verb "to come," with its obvious reference to sexual or orgasm. (1st performance)
9. The reunited couple discussing adulteries committed during their separation, and the suggestion of a wife's denial of infidelity, even when discovered by her husband. (1st performance; transcript of 2nd performance at p. 29)
10. "Shoving" a funnel of hot lead "up one's ass." (transcript of 2nd performance at p. 22; transcript of 3rd performance at p. 13)
11. The story dealing with the masked man, Tonto, and an unnatural sex act. (1st performance)
12. Mildred Babe Zaharias and the "dyke profile of 1939." (transcript of 3rd performance at p. 27)
"Isn't this wonderful? Isn't this a great day in America? Boy, has this been nuts, or what? My dad had so much to say and so little time to say it. This is what America is all about.''
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Many years ago it was Lenny Bruce. A few years ago it was Howard Stern and other shock jocks. Always labelled controversial. Nothing controversial about it. it's just smut. And the envelope gets stretched a bit more every year.
Wow, that was then. Today, you can't dance with headphones on at the Lincoln Memorial, or criticize gay marriage on a university campus.
We care about Lenny Bruce why? His work was trash then, and it is trash now. Nothing new, nothing special, just trash.
I thought of Lenny on Saturday, watching tweeters unfold every emerging detail of the NYPD shootings. Black shooter! Hispanic cop! Asian-American cop!
The jokes he would have made would be foul, using all the forbidden epithets. But fifty years later, we're still throwing down race, gender and all the rest like bids and trump cards at a bridge table.
But did he ever use the Lord's name in vain?
And he killed himself with heroin. Hmmph, another bad decision.
From the link:
Dissent in PEOPLE v. BRUCE
(Criminal Trial Court of the City of New York, Nov. 4, 1964)
J. Randall Creel Judge of the Criminal Court of the City of New York
"And most ironically, the voice of the sovereign people is muted into inarticulate impotence once the judiciary has rendered an opinion declaring the matter before it of constitutional import, whether it is obscenity or other vastly more vital social policy problems."
Applicable then, applicable now.
I am Laslo.
Old Lenny was a free spirit, except of course when it came to his lovely bride:"Bruce met his future wife, Honey Harlow, a stripper from Baltimore, Maryland, in 1951. They were married that same year, and Bruce was determined to have her end her work as a stripper."
Smut for me, but not for thee (or anyone else apparently).
You can't put tits and ass on the marquee!...Why not?...Because it's dirty and vulgar, that's why not!...
Titties are dirty and vulgar?...Okay, we'll compromise. How about Latin? Gluteus maximus, pectoralis majors nightly...
That's alright, that's clean, class with ass, I'll buy it...
Clean to you, schmuck, but dirty to the Latins!
Sum Laslo.
Meade made a comment, then banned himself?
Drug overdose? He got off easy. Imagine the hell the left would have put him through for saying nigger or dyke in his act.
"Meade made a comment, then banned himself?"
Nothing gets attention like censorship.
And now it's mainstream. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
I don't care if a joke's funny, so long as it's dirty.
Check out some of his material. If it were not controversial no one today would remember Lennie Bruce. I have a low bar to clear for funny. He was not.
Ooops, Lenny not Lennie, of course.
JAORE said... [hush][hide comment]
Check out some of his material. If it were not controversial no one today would remember Lennie Bruce. I have a low bar to clear for funny. He was not.
I guess maybe you had to be there. Inflection, nuance, timing, and a nightclub setting with everybody drunk or stoned. Might have been real funny, in a sixth grade sort of way.
Lenny considered himself a man of the left and was hated by much of the right. Those who tried to censor him were generally considered to be on the right.
In America back then people on the right were the censors and people on the left were all in favor of free speech, no matter who was offended. How things change.
In Don DeLillo's novel Underworld, the scenes with Lenny Bruce are terrific.
I will say, that the country really has become debased. Think of how tame What Lenny said was. Now he might even get a PG13 rating.
Though, good point about getting banned for speaking ill of gay marriage or womens issues. Now its not the smut that will get you it's the lack of political correctness or strict adherence to the orthodox liberal position.
Whatever it might be today.
He was so important, Grace Slick sang about him in her days before the Airplane.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r34vfH4lDAQ
He was monumentally self destructive. He got to pose his self destruction as a form of martyrdom. Neat trick. Sometimes the grandiose achieve grandeur.
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