Bruce was fully, quiveringly conscious, and audiences in Chicago and San Francisco started to respond to his manner and message. So did the police of these and other great cities, rightly detecting in this uncompromising outsider a threat to conventional mores. Arrests began, on narcotics and obscenity charges, but Bruce pressed on, a long-distance runner whose loneliness was now applauded by liberals everywhere, including those tardy converts, my chums in Manhattan. It became clear that Bruce was tapping a vein of satire that went much deeper than the puppet warfare of the two-party system. Whichever group was in power, his criticisms remained valid.
Venereal disease is news only when poor people catch it.
If Norman Thomas, the senior American socialist, were to be elected president, he would have to find a minority to hate. At times he drawled and mumbled too privately, lapsing into a lexicon of Yiddish phrases borrowed from the show biz world that reared him. The British comedian Jonathan Miller, who watched the performance in something like awe, agreed with me afterward that Bruce was a bloodbath where Beyond the Fringe had been a pinprick. His trust was misplaced. On her way out Peter Cook sought to remonstrate with her, whereupon she seized his tie while one of her escorts belted him squarely on the nose.