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They declined to publish a particular column—my review of MASH as though it were a Busby
Berkeley musical called Gook Killers of 1970– ostensibly on the grounds of bad taste, but I
learned that three wholesalers had told the publisher they were pressured by the FBI and would
refuse to distribute Cavalier if my name appeared in it.

On top of that, my name was on a list of sixty-five “radical” campus speakers, released by the
House Internal Security Committee. The blacklist was published in the New York Times, and
picked up by newspapers across the country. It might have been a coincidence, but my campus-
speaking engagement-bookings stopped abruptly. It felt just like a film.

OH, WELL

It was over for me, but it had been fun—like the issue with only the one large red headline
on the Cavalier cover: “BEAT ‘EM SENSELESS FIRST”—THE FREE SPEECH
CONTROVERSY, BY PAUL KRASSNER . . . “Ironically,” I wrote, “it is this concept of the
total education experience on campus which I believe to be the basic significance of the much-
misunderstood free-speech imbroglio at the University of California in Berkeley.”

The sit-in lasted till 3 a.m. Next day, October 1, 1964, ten tables were manned again, and
a campus policeman approached one of the tables (manned by the Congress of Racial Equality)
where a dozen persons were seated. One was singled out and placed under arrest. But before you
could say nonviolent demonstration, the police car was surrounded, its captors reaching as many
as 3,000 students. During the late evening, bored fraternity men gathered and tossed lighted
cigarettes and eggs on those sitting in the plaza. The demonstrators responded with silence.

Next day, 450 police assembled on campus to remove the cop car and its arrested inhabitant,
but an agreement to negotiate was reached and the demonstrators dispersed. One of the folk songs
to come out of the Free Speech Movement incidentally, was If I Negotiate With You, to the tune
of the Beatles’ If I Fell in Love With You.

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