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Azggty 2 sor Vr ie She -+. -secent j chuckles. 2 s i oe : i : He had been found guilty of ob- > scenity that morning and now, late > in the afternoon, in the Hotel - Marlton in Greenwich Village, _' Lenny Bruce was talking about it * to a reporter from the old World- Telegram and Sun. Now let me tell you, first hand, _ that newspaper reporters are ~ trained to seek out facts, and so * they almost never catch the sense . of the event they are covering; therefore they conclude interviews * by asking questions like, “How do you think all this will end for you, Lenny?” “What, the trial, ” he asked, “the _ appeal?” “No, the whole thing, ali: the ~ trials, the arrests, do you think ' they'll stop?” Lenny was leaning against the “wall, his hands jammed into the pockets of his denims, the tails of his green-striped dress shirt hang- ing loose. His eyes, puffed with the : profit of lost sleep, were fixed on “ the debris of legal documents, tapes, trial transcripts, precedent - eases, which covered his bed and spilled over onto the floor of the . small room. Then he smiled and looked up and he told it in the only - way he knew, his private route to truth, he told a story: “Okay,” he said, “here's how it S ends. One day I’m going to get an + order to appear in court. Oh, shit, : what is it this time? But when I * get there the courtroom will be all . e. woe ete +. + J walk in they'll all jump up and * .. ¢ yell ‘Surprise.’ And there't! be al! = he cops that busted me, and the > judges and DA's who tried me, and + theyll aay; ‘Lenny, this is a sur- _ everything that happened you - Well, Lenny Bruce never lost his - eee. - ‘respect for the law, but-he won't : decorated, dig, with balloons, and _ > streamers, and confetti, and when “- + prise party for you, we're giving © : you @ party because even after -- _:) never lost respect for the law.” . ..° -_ get his party, because he’s dead" now, The cops said it was an over- *< -Seoreer, some ‘of which -must be. giving ‘Lenny «some graven ofody captured the Lenny Bruce t knew quite as well as : Stan ohen did, the editor of the West Side News and Morning- r, and this column is reprinfed with his permission —Ed. Ww. dose of drugs, and a friend of his said it was an overdose of cops, but probably it was an overdose of re- spect for the law. ; You see, the trouble with Lenny Bruce was that he really believed he would get his party. Somehow, he never learned that freedom of speech in America meant the right to speak everything but the truth. He never quite understood that he was living in a place whose stand- ards of morality were set by Frank Hogan and Cardinal! Spellman and 3. Edgar Hoover. How could you ‘tell him that this was their Amer- ica, and in their America justice means the preservation of power and religion means you don't pay texes. - But you couldn't really tell that to Lenny, because despite the bru- tality of his satire, despite the language and the insight and the wit, Lenny Bruce lived with a child's innocence and a naivete which allowed him to believe that he would find justice in Judge Murtagh’s court. It was a pretty trial, the kind of a trial in which 15 eyewitnesses testified that Bruce did not make an obscene , there was @ spote of editorializing about his life and - court found that he did on the lone : "gesture during his act but the ‘atestimony oft the. arresting officer. “That's how the trial went, and i you were there you knew that the “ Christians stood a better chance in the Colosseum. - Still, Lenny, | thought he would be acquitted be * cause according to the interpreta- tions of the Supreme Court he was ; clearly not guilty of obscenity. Z And that was the Law. : : ' “The law is a beautiful thing,” he told me once, “The people who ©”. attack the law don't really under- & stood it. You know what it’s like®’ he said. “It's like the Supreme wd ‘Court, that’s the daddy and it runs | -~ the store because it knows how. All. courts, they’re the clerks, and the ~°- daddy says, ‘Now you just sweep > {> the floor and unpack the stock and : that's it. I don’t want you to place - - any orders or change the displays, _ _and keep your hands out-of the a : register.’ But the minute he turns —- >. 52; his back all the clerks think they aoe ‘ know how to run it better, and they start changing everything and or- . dering the wrong things and it’s a mess. The Supreme Court's the big — daddy, it knows what is, but the little guys keep trying to run the store.” America is like a giant super- market whose many departments are independently operated. They ° are run by such as Johnson and Hoover and Hogan and Spellman. |