English Tabu

Dear Carl,
I’m sending the first draft of what I am planning to publish in next week’s Sunday column. I am well aware that it might not be the best for my career, especially with all those deputy attorneys up the…of those who are publicly defending freedom of speech. I’m just sending you this to ask whether if you think that it is too much to publish on the Times, and if it has the power tobury me along those who are charged with obscenity nowadays...just let me know what you think.
About Lenny Bruce
New Yorker Lenny Bruce has, once again, shaken the stage with his “iniquitous” speech. Called iniquitous by those who, of course, see in his free speech the danger of the lost of fear. It is because behind his comedy, that has the power of tensing up an audience and then makes them eruptwith applause and laughter, there is a deep political and social critique. This criticism that presents itself by exposing the absurdity of several of our social conventions, is nothing but funny to the sensible eye. Funny inasmuch it is, pardon the redundancy, absurd. It is the lost of fear what he is preaching on his stand-up comedy act, and this loss of fear, is what those who are accusing himof obscenity in this very moment, those who call him iniquitous, are afraid of.
Yet, these accusations would be irrelevant and not worthy of mention if there were no transcendental fact whatsoever. The initial phrase of this article is the main statement given by New York’s district attorney last night with the opening of Lenny Bruce’s trial. Trial that this journalist is outraged that is evenconsidered by the court, due to the fact that it is because of the agenda against freedom of speech that the state is seemingly placing forth.
What is it that Lenny Bruce says on stage that is so outrageous to the State? Perhaps the best example of what he does, with everything that he believes should undergo a change, is that of his text: “Are there any Nigg*** in here tonight?” It is perhaps,one of the finest and most sophisticated ways of putting forth an argument that I have ever seen. What he does, in essence, is explaining how the condemnation of a word, thinking that it is something abhorrent, has the only consequence of enhancing its abhorrence. In other words, how thinking that something, not just the word Nigg*** is wrong, and therefore treated as if it is a taboo, the onlything that is being done is allowing this “wrong” thing to cause damage. He ends his speech claiming, “If the word Nig*** didn’t mean anything at all, then there wouldn’t be a black kid crying to his parents because he was called Nigg*** at school. Simple as that. Claiming the word is something demeaning is allowing it to be demeaning, or perhaps it would be better to quote him “it’s the suppressionof the word what gives it its power, the violence, the viciousness”. This is Bruce’s argument.
Of course, he enjoys how he does it, its comedy after all, and within his speech he weaves comedy that has, as well as the purpose of criticizing, entertaining. It is because he chooses such an effective media to deliver the speech (because it has a wide range of diffusion, and because comedy, or atleast good comedy, stays in people’s heads), that his message is mistaken, or better yet, judged, as obscene and mischievous. This is the excuse the state, or those who are persecuting him, have in order to claim that his message, or his argument, or his critique, has no value whatsoever. Notwithstanding, there is even a more controversial implication in such critique, and it’s the following:
Ifit is the suppression of the word, the mystification of it, what causes the violence that the word inflicts upon the negro ethnic group, then this is something that could have been avoided, and that was, most likely, product of a deliberate act. That is to say, that the conception that it is an offensive word is in the same degree an offence, and an act of violence against Negroes. What this...