One Hand Jerking (39 page)

There was the music and the mud. There was the dope and the dancing. There was the free food and the free love. There were the Port-o-Potties and the politics. Most of all, there was a sense of community. The political contingent was encamped in a red and white striped tent called Movement City. In the afternoon, Yippies were churning out flyers proclaiming that the festival should be free, and at night they were busy unscrewing the chain link fences.

While The Who was performing, Abbie Hoffman, tripping on acid, climbed up on the stage with the intention of informing the audience that John Sinclair (manager of the band MC5 and chairman of the White Panthers) was serving ten years in prison for possession of two joints—that this was really the politics behind the event—but before he could get his message out, Pete Townshend—also tripping, having been dosed backstage—transformed his guitar into a tennis racket and smashed Abbie in the head with a swift backhand.

My yellow leather fringe jacket, which I had been wearing for the first time, was stolen from the Movement City tent. But I found myself dealing with a much more significant kind of paranoia. I had been informed by a reliable source that a think tank, the Rand Corporation in Santa Monica, California, was contracted by the Nixon administration to determine how Americans might react to a cancellation of the election in 1972 because of “internal civil unrest” in response to the Vietnam war. Investigative journalist Ron Rosenbaum was able to determine that I was the fourth person down from a leaker in the White House.

Feeling like the Ancient Mariner waving his filthy albatross in front of anybody who would listen, I did my best to spread the word, regardless of the possibility that I was being used to float a trial balloon. I worked my way up from the underground papers to the reporters in the press tent at Woodstock. I blabbed about it at campus appearances and in alternative radio interviews. Ultimately the story filtered up into the mainstream media.

When Attorney General John Mitchell announced that whoever had started this rumor should be “punished,” I sent him a letter confessing my sin, but I never heard back. Meanwhile, the Rand Corporation concluded that the average American citizen would not stand for a cancellation of the election. Now, 35 years later, that same possibility has been floated
publicly
by the Bush administration, a trial balloon propelled by the arrogance of power but pricked by the polls. Oh well, there's always the possibility of declaring martial law.

Here's the Rumpleforeskin Report, dropping the other convention shoe—with some highlights of the Republicans' turn at producing the traditional campaign infomercial extravaganza.

The tag-team mud-wrestling match between the Kerry sisters and the Bush twins was a sure way to attract the much coveted youth vote.

The Swift Boat race along the Hudson River provided a breath of fresh air that sounded more like listening to Nixon speak.

When John McCain referred to a “disingenuous filmmaker,” Quentin Tarantino stood up and took a bow in his own living room.

Alan Keyes castrated himself in order to prevent “selfish hedonism.”

Tim Russett, host of NBC's
Meet the Press
, revealed that he is actually the missing Quaid brother.

As demonstrators chanted—“No more Bush! No more Bush!”—Whoopi Goldberg assumed it was a shout-out for bikini-waxing special-interest groups.

Every time that the marching protesters yelled out, “Whose streets?” there was a chorus of New York City police responding, “Our streets!”

This event also served as the political equivalent of
American Idol,
where presidential wannabes such as Rudy Giuliani, John McCain, George Pataki and Arnold Schwarzenegger auditioned as future candidates.

Schwarzenegger goosed Laura Bush, then she tried to grab his balls in retaliation, but she couldn't find them due to his heavy use of steroids.

While talking about the state of the American economy, Cheney suddenly broke into a popular country song, “Take This Job and Go Fuck Yourself.”

But the biggest surprise during those four days was the introduction of George W. Bush by Osama bin Laden himself, wearing an orange jump suit, handcuffed behind his back and feet shackled to each other. The audience alternated between cheering and booing the bedraggled figure for a full eight minutes. Bin Laden's capture had been a superbly kept secret for five suspenseful weeks.

“Unaccustomed as I am to public speaking,” he began, “I am honored to launch the re-election of your President Bush. That may seem strange to you, so let me assure you that my presence at Madison Square Garden has absolutely nothing to do with any kind of plea bargain. First of all, I happen to
agree
with the message of this convention that the world is a better place without that inhumane infidel, Saddam Hussein. Moreover, I very much appreciated the $43 million that your government gave to the Taliban four months before September 11, 2001. Certainly, I wish to express my eternal gratitude to Allah for providing the best possible recruiter for al Qaeda, and I am speaking here of Mr. Bush. . . .”

Meanwhile, waiting in the wings to walk out onto the specially built circular stage, Bush was plucking the petals of a daisy and muttering, “. . . gonna win . . . not gonna win . . . gonna win . . .”

What if there were no Electoral College? There would be no red and blue states. There would be no battleground states that could go either way. There would not have been an American invasion of Iraq, Al Gore would now be running for reelection, and the Democrats would be warning that a vote for Ralph Nader is a vote for John McCain. In the 2000 election, there were 50,999,897 votes for Gore, as opposed to 50,456,002 votes for George Bush. In Florida, Bush won by just 537 votes.

Last week, among the articles in the media about the Electoral College, there was one in
USA Today
and another in
TheSpoof.com
. Below are excerpts from each. Which story is from which publication? I report, you decide.

1. “Even as President Bush accepted the Republican nomination Thursday and the final chapter of the campaign began, strategists in both camps were preparing for an unprecedented situation when it ends. An Electoral College tie. Shifts in electoral votes and the realities of an evenly divided nation mean there is a credible case that the final tally in Bush vs. Kerry could be 269-269—an outcome that would throw the election to the House of Representatives. . . .

“The Constitution outlines what follows in case of a tie, which has happened only once, in 1800. The newly elected House of Representatives chooses the president from the top three finishers; each state has one vote. The newly elected Senate chooses the vice president; each senator has a vote. . . . This time, the process presumably would favor Bush. Republicans control 30 of the 50 state delegations in the House; the GOP almost certainly will keep control in the November elections. Republicans now have 51 seats. But if Democrats regain an edge in the Senate—which is conceivable—the choice for vice president could get interesting. A George W. Bush-John Edwards administration?”

2. “All 538 electors of the U.S. Electoral College unamimously vetoed a permanent recess of the U.S. Electoral College and ban on all Electoral College methods of carrying out national elections today. Earlier this month the landslide referendum on ending the system led to support for a bill in Congress. The executive branch then subsequently signed that bill. The Electoral College's actions taken to undo the ban come as a major setback to thousands of politicians and mllions of citizens who campaigned in favor of a ban. . . . Detractors purportedly include up to 75 percent of the United States population.”

The Electoral College system was originally designed in part to cater to slavery and to the disenfrancisement of women. A few months ago, I sent the following letter to Hillary Rodham Clinton: “I write a column for the weekly
New York
Press
, and I have a question for you. I recall that when you were elected to the Senate, in the wake of the debacle in Florida that led to Bush being in the White House, you promised to do your best to get rid of the Electoral College system. Were you able to get anything going along those lines? If so, what transpired? And if not, what were the obstacles? I would very much appreciate hearing from you.”

I have yet to receive a reply.

Hillary Clinton was able to fly into the senate on the wings of Rudy Giuliani's prostate cancer. If Bush wins in November, then it would be karmic irony in the 2008 presidential election if Clinton wins the popular vote but the Electoral College goes for Giuliani.

I had told Abbie Hoffman how Lenny Bruce once printed the word FUCK on his forehead with strips of paper towel in a courthouse lavatory to discourage photographers from taking his picture. During the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Abbie was arrested while we were eating breakfast, ostensibly for having the word FUCK written in lipstick on his forehead, but really just to get him off the streets. He might have gotten away with it if only he hadn't tipped his hat to the police who were assigned to follow us.

“The duty of a revolutionist,” Abbie informed the cops, “is to finish breakfast.”

In 1969, a few years after my first marriage broke up, I had a two-night stand with Jada Rowland. She was an actress, on TV every afternoon in
Secret Storm
. I fell in love with Jada, but I hated soap operas. They were the ultimate creation of a value system that was the antithesis of my own. Their main function was to program viewers into becoming greater consumers by manipulating them to identify with the lives of other people who didn't even exist. One viewer even sent a letter warning Jada that her “husband” was seeing another woman. Still, within that corrupt context, Jada maintained a sense of integrity. Once, the script called for her to put down her young daughter by referring sarcastically to her imagination, and Jada refused to say the line.

Richard Avedon had invited me to be included in a collection of his photos of countercultural people. I accepted on the condition that Jada and I could pose together, and we would choose the pose. What we had in mind was a take-off on
the
Two Virgins
album cover, where John Lennon and Yoko Ono stood nude, holding hands.

We would be standing naked, too, smiling with our arms around each other. Jada would also be holding a patriotic cup with stars and stripes, and there would be arrows pointing to her breasts and crotch, and I would be holding a small American flag. Oh, yes, and I would have an erection. If
Two Virgins
was about anatomy, this would be about physiology. Jada was willing to risk losing her $1,000-a-week job to participate just for the fun of it.

“I think it was my idea,” she recalls, “to do a take-off on Lennon/Ono. I was on one of my rants, objecting to the fact that the penis could never be seen erect and that there was a certain hypocrisy in their pretended ‘innocence' as it seemed to me that they must have known that everyone just wanted to see the tits of the girl who stole the Beatle away.”

I had ingested a capsule of THC powder before the photo session. Jada and I were now standing before the camera, and the only thing missing was my hard-on. I had heard that THC was actually an elephant tranquilizer. I would soon find out if that was true.

Avedon asked what music we wanted to listen to during the session. I asked for the Beatles' “Hey Jude,” but he didn't have it, so instead he played my second choice, Bob Dylan singing “Lay, Lady, Lay.”

Jada and I began to kiss.

“This is obscene,” she whispered.

“No,” I whispered back, “it's very pure. But you're right, it
is
kind of goal-oriented.”

As she remembers it, “What was ‘obscene' in my view was that I wasn't in love or in lust with you, so giving way to your request that I kiss you so you could get a hard-on seemed obscene. I felt both uneasily guilty, as I became aware that I was taking advantage of your fondness for me in order to be photographed by Avedon, and quite uncomfortable that you were taking advantage of the situation in order to kiss me. Those were the only ‘obscenities' in my eyes.”

We continued kissing. Dylan was now asking the musical question, “Why wait any longer for the world to begin?” My penis rose to the occasion, and the crew cheered us on.

I signed a release, assuming that the photo would never be seen because the publishing of an erection was so taboo then. However, in 1999—three decades later—my bluff was called. Avedon and Diane Arbus published a $75 book of photos,
The Sixties
.

A
Los Angeles Times
review said that I looked “sheepish” and “sustained an erection.”