Salon: Lenny Bruce Died for Our Sins

Thanks to the martyred comedian, American culture is free to be a wild kingdom. But with his new anti-porn crusade, Attorney General Ashcroft wants to turn back the clock.

By Gary Kamiya

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Lenny Bruce's legal ordeal is one of the most shameful chapters in the cultural history of postwar America -- a persecution that obsessed Bruce, drained his creative energies, bankrupted him, and allowed the demons that always haunted him to take over. Bruce died of a morphine overdose in 1966, but as Vincent Cuccia, one of the New York D.A.'s who prosecuted Bruce's last obscenity case, said, "We drove him into poverty and bankruptcy and then murdered him. We all knew what we were doing. We used the law to kill him."

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Has that dragon really died? It's true that no comedian or author or singer will probably ever again be led away in handcuffs for using what some beat cop decides are offensive words -- certainly not for saying that Eleanor Roosevelt "had the nicest tits of any lady in office" or doing a shtick about a wife who returns home to find her husband screwing a chicken. But the outdated obscenity laws and murky Supreme Court rulings used to arrest and convict Bruce remain, a testament to our nation's complete inability to deal with the issue of obscenity. (Indeed, as Ronald Collins and David Skover point out in their excellent book, "The Trials of Lenny Bruce," his final New York conviction has never been formally overturned: In the eyes of the law, disgracefully, Lenny Bruce remains a criminal.)

Most tellingly, the highest powers in the land are still eminently capable of using those laws to crack down on material they deem immoral -- even if millions of Americans spend billions of dollars a year consuming that material. The issue today is not dirty words or offensive comedic routines, but pornography -- America's favorite not-so-secret vice and the bête noire of cultural conservatives and religious fundamentalists. (At least the official bête noire: According to many in a position to know, the most Bible-thumping types tend to be the most avid watchers of porn.) Pornography may not be as inspiring a subject to defend as a Lenny Bruce spritz, but free speech is free speech. It's also hard to avoid the feeling that Attorney General John Ashcroft and his ilk, who are constantly calling for a return to the good old days of clear moral guidelines and harsh sanctions, would have been among Bruce's most zealous persecutors.

On Aug. 7, Ashcroft's Justice Department announced a 10-count indictment against a porno production company called Extreme Associates. The owners of the company, Robert Zicari and Janet Romano (aka "Lizzie Borden") were charged with distributing obscene films and video clips through the U.S. mail and the Internet…

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http://www.salon.com/opinion/freedom/2003/08/26/lennybruce/

I only disagree with calling someone a "martyr" who died from a self-inflicted morphine overdose. I know they were taking some poetic license but it rings false for me.

But it is a great article, I just emailed it to some friends, thanks.

I like the way the writer use the word "official" with all due irony and scepticism in the sentence "At least the official bête noire: According to many in a position to know, the most Bible-thumping types tend to be the most avid watchers of porn." And, of course, it's the truth, which is what makes it so funny!