Remembering The Realist

[Flanders]

The Village Voice is dead! I might care if I knew anything about the VV. As I understand it the VV’s passing is more memorable than its life had been:

But the real reason that the Village Voice is dead is because the alternative media is dead and the alternative media is dead because there is nothing for it to be an alternative to. New Yorkers can just as easily read shrill rants about the NYPD in the Daily News, pretentious movie reviews for artsy films at The Onion and leftist denunciations of the War on Terror in the New York Times.

The End of the Alternative Media
Daniel Greenfield Wednesday, August 22, 2012

The End of the Alternative Media

As I read the obituary I was reminded of The Realist. The first issue was published in 1958, the final issue, #146, was published in 2001. That’s not many issues over a 54 year period.

I originally read The Realist in the 1960s. I don’t recall reading any issues after 1969. A friend of mine was a devoted reader. Once in a while, when I ran into him in the union hall (Sailors Union of the Pacific), he gave me his copy of the latest issue to read. I found a lot of humor in the articles. Based on what Greenfield says about the VV, a lack of humor was the true cause of death.

As I remember San Francisco in the sixties The Realist was the Hippie Bible. Nobody, except the courts, took contributors like Madalyn Murray and Lennie Bruce seriously. Murray was a nut job, and Bruce was the best standup comic of the day putting everybody on. You took them for what they were.

Anyway, here’s the link to The Realist’s archives for anybody who wants to read about the Left’s concerns in the 1960s:

THE REALIST ARCHIVE PROJECT

 

[blastoff]

No more Village Voice? Gee, some folks will have to find an alternative toilet paper source.