Retiring the Realist   

Paul Krassner has been called every name in the book. The FBI took issue with a Life magazine article that labeled him a "social rebel," calling him instead a "raving, unconfined nut" in a poison pen letter. People magazine crowned him "the father of the underground press," prompting Krassner to demand a blood test. When Krassner protested the Vietnam War with Abbie Hoffman, he coined the term "Yippie" to refer to himself and others in the peace movement.

He's an idealist, an activist, an author and a stand-up comedian, but he's perhaps best described as "The Realist," the name of the satirical magazine he published for more than 40 years before calling his 146th issue, Spring 2001, his last.

Krassner founded The Realist in 1958 at the age of 26. His muckraking pitches had been rejected as not serious enough by The Independent, the anti-censorship paper for which he worked at the time, and as too grown-up by Mad Magazine, which occasionally published his freelance material.

By 1967, a labor of love that began with 600 subscribers had become a literary cult hit, read by more than 100,000 counterculture fans. Krassner took aim at everything from religion to psychedelia to government conspiracy, and never accepted any advertising. In 1974, unable to continue subsidizing The Realist, he took an 11-year hiatus, during which time he covered the Patty Hearst trial for Playboy and the Dan White murder trial, with the infamous "Twinkie Defense," for The Nation. He briefly edited Hustler, commissioning feminist articles for the magazine.

In The Realist, Krassner shunned any pretense of objectivity, but otherwise maintained rigorous journalistic standards, extensively researching notorious send-ups like "The Parts That Were Left Out of the Kennedy Book." The piece was written in the style of William Manchester's historic account of the JFK assassination to create a shocking portrait of presidential necrophilia.

"People weren't sure whether it was real or not, which meant that what I wrote was possible on some level," Krassner says.

Negative response to the JFK story prompted Krassner to include instructions for canceling subscriptions in the next issue of The Realist, and he fielded several death threats.

Krassner says the magazine has served its purpose of "communicating without compromise." Irreverence is now an industry, he adds, and controversy is now a commodity, accelerating the rate at which underground stories find their way into the mainstream to such a degree that "all of the taboos I so gleefully violated are no longer taboo." Near the end, The Realist's circulation was between 5,000 and 7,000.

"The Realist took no prisoners. It was polemical and savage, but also deeply in the know about the evils of power," writes Andrei Codrescu in an e-mail to AJR. Codrescu is the editor of Exquisite Corpse, www.corpse.org, an online satirical journal. "Great publications have a natural life span. If Paul feels he's done enough in this medium, let's doff our hats. Better to quit while you're ahead."