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He Died For Our Sins
On Oct. 4, 1961, stand-up comic Lenny Bruce appeared at San Francisco's Jazz Workshop.
But among the crowd of jazz fans was a man who was not laughing. He was a San Francisco policeman named James Ryan, who had been sent to the club by his sergeant, James Solden, with instructions to see if anything of a "lewd nature" was going on.
Bruce was taken in a paddy wagon down to the Hall of Justice, booked on misdemeanor charges, and locked up in a cell.
It was the first of eight obscenity busts that were to consume, and ultimately help destroy, the life of one of America's greatest comedic satirists and verbal performers.
"I took exception. I took offense," Solden told Bruce. "We've tried to elevate this street. I'm offended because you broke the law. I mean it sincerely. I mean it. I can't see any right, any way you can break this word down, our society is not geared to it."
Bruce said, "You break it down by talking about it ... How about a word like 'clap'?"
"Well, 'clap' is a better word than '##########,'" Solden replied.
"Not if you get the clap from a ##########," Bruce rejoined.
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."
Bruce makes a very difficult martyr -- he was too irascible, too self-destructive, too perverse, too unclassifiable. But he is a martyr nonetheless -- a heartbreakingly vulnerable renegade who was broken by the final tail-lash of the dying dragon of American Puritanism.
Has that dragon really died? The outdated obscenity laws and murky Supreme Court rulings used to arrest and convict Bruce remain, a testament to our nation's complete inability to deal with the issue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.)
By Gary Kamiya (Salon.com)
On Oct. 4, 1961, stand-up comic Lenny Bruce appeared at San Francisco's Jazz Workshop.
But among the crowd of jazz fans was a man who was not laughing. He was a San Francisco policeman named James Ryan, who had been sent to the club by his sergeant, James Solden, with instructions to see if anything of a "lewd nature" was going on.
Bruce was taken in a paddy wagon down to the Hall of Justice, booked on misdemeanor charges, and locked up in a cell.
It was the first of eight obscenity busts that were to consume, and ultimately help destroy, the life of one of America's greatest comedic satirists and verbal performers.
"I took exception. I took offense," Solden told Bruce. "We've tried to elevate this street. I'm offended because you broke the law. I mean it sincerely. I mean it. I can't see any right, any way you can break this word down, our society is not geared to it."
Bruce said, "You break it down by talking about it ... How about a word like 'clap'?"
"Well, 'clap' is a better word than '##########,'" Solden replied.
"Not if you get the clap from a ##########," Bruce rejoined.
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."
Bruce makes a very difficult martyr -- he was too irascible, too self-destructive, too perverse, too unclassifiable. But he is a martyr nonetheless -- a heartbreakingly vulnerable renegade who was broken by the final tail-lash of the dying dragon of American Puritanism.
Has that dragon really died? 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.)
By Gary Kamiya (Salon.com)
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