Krassner vs. Breitbart in Playboy

Lefty icon Paul Krassner and conservative culture warrior Andrew Breitbart actually got together by mutual assent to discuss their respective world views. (At Krassner's invitation, says Playboy, and at a location as yet undisclosed.) Their exchange is in the December Playboy and online. Here's an excerpt:

KRASSNER: I was surprised to learn you consider my work to be one of your inspirations. You also claim that the mainstream media had a double standard and didn’t criticize me the way they do you and the conservative movement that you represent. That’s not true, though. I’ve been excoriated in papers from the Los Angeles Times to the Chicago Tribune to The Washington Post. My favorite headline was give this man a saliva test. You’ve also praised Abbie Hoffman and the Yippies and Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters as heavy influences. Both those men were close friends of mine and remain my touchstones, and yet you’re at the other end of the social and political spectrum. What I want to know is, how do they fit into the context of your personal mission?

BREITBART: Well, at the time you were doing what you were doing, trailblazing and causing mischief and mirth and effecting the type of political and social change you were attempting, there’s no doubt you were being challenged by others. What I’m talking about is the current order of the media in the 21st century and how history now looks on the Merry Pranksters, Abbie Hoffman, Ken Kesey and Hunter Thompson with great reverence. It’s as if they’ve been given their own wing of the journalism school. I don’t want to simplify history. I understand that, at the time, you went through hell, and the same could be said of Matt Drudge. From 1995 until about 2002 the same forces were trying to claim that Matt Drudge had no right to be doing what he was doing, which everybody now accepts as commonplace and accepted practice—AOL just purchased the Huffington Post for $315 million for replicating, on a left-of-center bent, what Matt Drudge does.

As it happens, the December Playboy also has a piece by L.A. author Steve Oney, on the football player Herschel Walker. Oney, you might recall, wrote about Breitbart in depth for Time last year — the piece that included the photo of Andrew taking a bath.