One Hand Jerking by Paul Krassner Page B

consulting with corporations and politicians alike.
    His $40,000 bail money, which he jumped on the eve of his first pre-trial hearing, was put up and sacrificed by Seagram heiress Barbara Bronfman. She sent him thousands more while he was on the lam, and alerted him when authorities were closing in. She was not charged with aiding and abetting a fugitive. Einhorn claimed that the reason he fled the United States was because he would not have received a fair hearing since he had once organized demonstrations against the Vietnam war.
    When the way was cleared for his extradition from France, he slashed his neck with a dull bread-knife. There were superficial cuts but heavy bleeding. He was in and out of the emergency room, his wound considered not life-threatening. Coincidentally, a psychiatrist on The Sopranos described such an act as a “suicidal gesture as opposed to a suicidal attempt —‘small cutting’ is the clinical term.”
    After Einhorn was back behind bars, the Philadelphia Daily News published an article:
    â€œRight about now, those prized Jersey beefsteak tomatoes are maturing into plump, succulent fruits ripe for the picking. We recommend you leave them on the vine just a little bit longer . . . when they will be finished growing. And ready
for throwing. By then, they should be overripe, thin-skinned, seedy, worm-ravaged, and perhaps even a little smelly, just like some ex-fugitive-murderer we all know: Ira ‘The Blade’ Einhorn. You can still take a shot at a reasonable facsimile of his smug mug laid out on a giant billboard. That’s right, the second annual Ira Einhorn ‘Killer Tomato’ contest is less than two weeks away. . . .
    â€œOwner of the homegrown tomato that best exhibits the characteristics of the killer—thin-skinned, ripe-smelling and seedy—wins a trip to Alcatraz. Others presenting tomatoes get a chance to toss their fruit at the billboard.”
    In response to a column in the News , local radio host Bob Rowell wrote:
    â€œEinhorn got a brief taste of the media limelight during the first Earth Day event, but was anything but a ‘counterculture hero’ or ‘darling of the left.’ Even before the murder, he was widely perceived to be insincere, phony and a con. The column was obviously a cheap shot at a subculture that the writer clearly despises. Einhorn and Manson were two murderers who were never embraced by the counterculture. Actually, they had much more in common with the contras and homicidal elements of some law enforcement entities.”
    Time magazine published a photo of Einhorn with Abbie Hoffman, proclaiming them to be friends. Not true. They met only once, at a 1968 conference of college newspaper editors in Washington. However, Einhorn did cultivate a relationship with Hoffman’s co-founder of the Yippies, Jerry Rubin. Anita Hoffman, the keeper of Abbie’s image, wrote a letter of complaint to Time .
    An episode of South Park included a character that was openly a parody of Einhorn, repeatedly warning that “Republicans are ruining the world,” and using brainwashing techniques to force children into celebrating Earth Day. Later, he chops a young child to pieces. Yes, “the bastard killed Kenny!”
    Among David Letterman’s Top 10 Reasons to Flee was this one: “If your new roommate says, ‘No matter what you hear, don’t open this trunk.’”
    While teaching an alternative education course in the 1960s at the University of Pennsylvania, Einhorn once stripped naked and danced in the classroom after passing around marijuana to the students.
    And finally, his ironic and irrelevant position on the drug war: “SWAT teams are not the solution to soft drugs. Compassion must rule wherein medical marijuana is concerned. Hemp should flourish, along with free energy and the UFO information that would allow people to create it.”
    Postscript : Ira Einhorn was found guilty