Krassner 'Performs' at Law School, Debunks Draft and Ginzburg Ruling

The four-letter-word fans who filled the Ames Courtroom last night to hear a talk by Paul Krassner, editor of The Realist, were not dissappointed. The self-styled "sexual libertine" was armed even with red, white, and blue posters of obscenity.

Krassner, who told his audience he was "still recuperating from the haircut" he underwent to appear in court during a recent libel suit, spared little.

Taking brief and irreverent swipes at "The Singing Nun," LBJ, Donald Duck--a transvestite, because only drakes are really male--and Madlyn Murray--a "paranoid, nutty and aggressive, but doing good lawsuits"--be then devoted more of his time to the draft and the recent pornography cases.

"Can I burn a photostat of my draft card here?" Krassner asked, looking around the courtroom, explaining that he had already burned photostats in a dozen states and Canada. It was probably as effective as destroying the real thing he suggested, and quipped, "What can the police do--send me a photostat of a subpoena?"

Moving on to the Ginzberg case, and adopting a rare tone of seriousness, Krassner questioned Ginzburg's deliberate sensationalizing, just as the court had done, but contested the court's decision, based on exploitation and "vulgar promotionalism."

"If we follow that to its logical conclusion," he said, perfume and Kalgon Bath soap ads will be obscene. "If the law is against exploitation, we would have to indict Heinz, with its 57 varieties."

"But, maybe we could get rid of the bomb that way, if we could think of a way to advertise it with vulgar promotionalism," he added.