Who Will Fill The Baconcy Left By Pigasus?
during this year's Democratic National Convention, the whole world is botching
An updated recording of the text, a version of which was written for and originally published in The Lumpen Times special Democrazy issue, recorded LIVE Wednesday, August 21, on the This Is Hell radio show/podcast. Visit the website for long form interviews, Rotten History, hangover cures, and more:
They famously brought a pig to Chicago for the Democratic Convention as a candidate for President. The nomination of Pigasus was the kind of political theater at which the Yippies excelled. But, like most good satire, it didn’t confine itself to conventional boundaries, not even to those of the bloody police riot the protest turned into. The comedy bled into the courtroom.
During the trial of The Chicago Eight-minus-one-bound-and-gagged-Black-man, folksinger Phil Ochs was on the witness stand. Defense counsel William Kunstler was questioning him about Pigasus. What follows is from the actual trial transcript, for real:
KUNSTLER: Did you have any role yourself in that?
OCHS: Yes, I helped select the pig, and I paid for him.
KUNSTLER: Now, did you find a pig at once when you went out?
OCHS: No, it was very difficult. We stopped at several farms and asked where the pigs were.
KUNSTLER: None of the farmers referred you to the police station, did they?
OCHS: No.
CHIEF PROSECUTOR THOMAS FORAN: Objection.
JUDGE JULIUS HOFFMAN: I sustain the objection.
Kunstler’s question about pigs at the police station was artfully posed. Not a surprise, since his name is also the German word for “artist.” Pigs and the art of satire are never far from each other.
Onstage in London one night, concluding a joke about the original Planet of the Apes movie and book – the latter written by French post-war left intellectual author Pierre Boulle – English socialist standup comic and writer Stewart Lee said, “Satire is where it's the same as it is now, except there's animals in it." To most of Lee’s listeners the character Napoleon the pig in George Orwell’s allegory, Animal Farm, no doubt came immediately to mind. I hope it comes to the minds of most readers of this, too, especially now that I’ve given you an unsubtle jab in the ribs.
Aside from rumors of pigs put to humorous use during medieval carnival entertainment, the first, or maybe just the best, recorded satirical performance by a pig (until Pigasus) was contrived by Vladimir Durov in Berlin, 1907. According to theater historian Joel Schecter:
"Durov placed a German officer's cap, or 'helm' as he called it, in the circus ring, and his trained pig ran to retrieve it. Using ventriloquism, Durov made the pig appear to be saying 'Ich will helm,' meaning 'I want the helmet.' But the phrase could also be translated 'I am Wilhelm,' thereby equating Germany’s Emperor, Wilhelm II, with a trained pig. 'The audience understood the pun at once and applauded it. The German police understood it too,' according to Russian critic Emanuel Dvinsky’s account of the event. Durov was arrested. The pig escaped without prosecution."
Theatrical satire as it was understood at that pre-World War I moment, and between and during the wars, was not something that needed to happen in a place as genteel as a theater. Staged in beer halls, circus rings, and the streets, it was low comedy with the aim of knocking the powerful down to the level of the public, or even better, to the level of a pig, where they could be judged by those they presumed to rule.
Democracy, in its ideal form in the ideal mind of an ideal Enlightenment thinker, is supposed to achieve by ballot the same outcome. We’re all supposed to be, in a legal sense, equal. At least those are the conjuring words in some incantation about the promise of the Constitution of the United States. There’s some doubt. Some have doubts. We, the people, have our doubts. Satire has done a better job bringing low the rich and powerful than democracy seems able to do.
Sadly, our hero, Pigasus, is no more. The September after the trial, the Tribune reported that, after Pigasus was busted by the bipedal pigs, he and his wife, Mrs. Pigasus, and their piglet child were taken to the Anti-Cruelty Society, after which detention they were all transported to a Grayslake, Illinois farm. Today the entire Pigasus family is presumed deceased by the same natural causes that could also take Trump and/or Biden at any moment.
There is no known porcine heir to Pigasus’s theatrical legacy. What’s going to happen this year? Are the only pigs to show up going to be the nasty, brutish, armored sort? Spraying pepper juice, firing teargas, and cracking skulls? Surely blood will be spilled. But the fact that The Pigs, Chicago-style, violent as they are, are inherently perfect targets for mockery should not be forgotten.
Kaiser Wilhelm was a vain man easily offended by mockery. Each cop is just another Kaiser, a puffed-up silent movie villain in a farce, especially this time around in their over-the-top dystopian military gear like they’re going into battle against Mad Max: Fury Road marauders. The cops are there to preserve disorder!
All the reasons for protesting the convention were no less serious in 1968 than they are this year. It’s a given now, as it was then, that cop violence indicts the cops and those who unleash them more than it does the protesters they assault. The dangerous fools now in charge are no less fools than in the past. And even if they can’t be beaten at violence, they can definitely be brought low the way the people always have.
A final highlight from the trial – again, from the actual transcript – and as you read it, I ask you to picture it as it might be performed by a couple of Marx Brothers and a pair of exasperated old-time movie stuffed shirts:
OCHS: Jerry Rubin was reading a prepared speech for the pig. The opening sentence was something like, "I, Pigasus, hereby announce my candidacy for the Presidency of the United States." He was interrupted in his talk by the police who arrested us.
KUNSTLER: Were you informed by an officer that the pig had squealed on you?
OCHS: Yes.
FORAN: Objection! I ask it be stricken.
JUDGE HOFFMAN: I sustain the objection!
Why, I oughta – Pies fly into faces. Zany music up. Dissolve to end titles. Th-th-th-that’s all, folks!
So great!