Rat (newspaper)

Rat Subterranean News, New York's second major underground newspaper, was created in March 1968, primarily by editor Jeff Shero, [ Jeff Shero's name became Jeff Nightbyrd at some point after he left Rat. ] Alice Embree and Gary Thiher, who moved up from Austin, Texas, where they had been involved in "The Rag".

Eye of the hurricane

Probably more than any other underground paper, "Rat" was in the eye of the political hurricane, making news as well as reporting it. "Rat" immediately attained national notoriety for its exclusive inside stories from the Columbia University student uprising in the spring of 1968. Its notoriety grew further when a couple of staff members (including star reporter Jane Alpert) were arrested in connection with a series of non-lethal bombings of corporate offices and military targets in late 1969. Its reputation took a new turn when it became the first bastion of sexism within "the revolution" to be successfully stormed by the forces of the emerging women's movement in early 1970. In its new incarnation as Women's LibeRATion, it lasted another year or two.

While the "East Village Other", published a few blocks away, represented the countercultural "establishment" with its arty covers and relatively relaxed culture-oriented content, "Rat" embodied the raging far-left politics of the late Sixties. Unlike the orthodox Marxist press, however, it still represented the fun-loving, free-wheeling spirit of hippiedom. Its stripped-down, straightforward design (created by Bob Eisner, later a leading designer of mainstream papers) marked a sharp break with the baroque psychedelia of "EVO" and other first-generation underground papers. But its relatively austere aethetics were relieved by abundant cartoons, including covers by Robert Crumb and clippings from 1940s poultry magazines found on the street and used as decorations wherever they fit.

Notable examples of "Rat"'s contents

Among the memorable contents were original contributions from William Burroughs, an interview with Kurt Vonnegut, and insightful front-line reports on the Weather Underground's seizure of SDS written by Shero and others. There were regular in-depth stories on the Young Lords, a militant Puerto Rican youth movement, and the Black Panthers - with a focus on New York's own Panther 21 terrorism trial, and well as news of the on-going sagas of Huey Newton, Afeni Shakur, and Eldridge and Kathleen Cleaver. Jane Alpert wrote on her own experiences in the notorious Women's House of Detention after she was arrested for involvement in the bombings. Like most underground papers, Rat shared articles through the Underground Press Syndicate, allowing regular coverage of distant events like the Native American takeover of Alcatraz Island — and of course, looming over everything, the Vietnam War.

While most pages of "Rat" serve as two-dimensional museums of its own era, its ecological writings are astonishingly far-sighted even now. The Apollo 11 mooning landings were seen through a mirror, in a grand color centerfold, sponsored by the Sierra Club, headlined "Towards A More Moon-Like Earth" - elegantly written and designed, probably by Jerry Mander and/or David Brower. Coming hard on the heels of UPS reports from the bloody struggles over People's Park, this manifesto provided a radical planetary overview for the nascent ecology movement. As this came to "Rat" in the form of a paid advertisement from a national organization, it presumably appeared in several other papers at the same time. Further thoughts on this subject came from the famously ex-Marxist Murray Bookchin, a regular Rat contributor whose left-anachist take on eco-politics anticipated (and influenced) the socially-engaged anti-globalization movement that emerged in 1999. Some of his articles appeared under pseudonyms.

There may be only one item first published in "Rat" that has survived on the fringes of mainstream culture. This would be Robin Morgan's incandescent essay "Good-Bye to All That" (a title borrowed from Robert Graves), which appeared in the first women's issue, and is still available in anthologies of the finest feminist writings.

It's noteworthy that the percentage of the paper devoted to reporting would-be revolutionaries' warfare with the state actually increased following the women's takeover, as did a tendency toward hard-left politics and Maoist graphics. The fiery "Women's LibeRATion" was a far cry from the safely upward-mobile feminism associated with the National Organization for Women and "Ms." magazine a few years later. Issues of workplace discrimination and sexual harassment were already a major concern, however. A poem about office work by Marge Piercy, "Metamorphosis into Bureaucrat", appeared in the women's "Rat" of March 7, 1970, containing the lines "Swollen, heavy, rectangular/ I am about to be delivered / of a baby /zerox machine."

A list of notable contents is misleading, in its implication that Rat took itself seriously, and expected to be taken seriously. In fact, it didn't and wasn't. Rat's sense of humor lightened up, and subtly undermined, its often heavy political messages. Most of its better writings contained humor of their own - and any that didn't were likely reach the reader accompanied by inappropriate illustrations and irreverent headlines (in press-on letters that were always a bit askew). Despite the life-and-death urgency of its political stories, Rat's modest newsstand sales came largely from "straight" people looking for offbeat entertainment — and looking for sex. [ Generalizations about Rat readership are based on market research conducted in Manhattan in 1969, including the author's brief conversations with, and observations of, various categories of consumer considering purchases of copies of Rat, as well as word-of-mouth reports from distribution staff. Samplings are not scientific. ]

Rat was published during a period of layout innovation and had a dramatic look of jumbled letters and strong imagery. Stat camera reproduction of paste-ups composed of often "swiped" graphic elements, and letraset type, were fast and affordable. Contributing designers included Van Howell and Joe Schenkman. This largely forgotten period of innovation in communication is remembered for its association with period (mainly punk) music graphics and concert flyers, and for many campus publications and activist flyers. It is somewhat similar to the later desktop publishing revolution.

Sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll

Before 1970, Rat was deeply involved in "sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll" as well as revolutionary politics. Censors were incensed, but newsstand sales shot up by 50%, when the cover featured a full-frontal-nude "Slum Goddess" rising from a toilet to liberate Manhattan (March 1969). Profits from Pleasure, a pornographic tabloid, published separately by one of Rat's founders, may have paid some of Rat's printing bills. [ Source for sales figures: Conversation with Jeff Shero, 1969. Artist credit for "Slum Goddess" - please add if known. Covert sources of income are rumored to have included personal donations from the poet W. H. Auden. (Please edit this if you know either way.) Printing bills sometimes went unpaid, During leans periods, Rat would find new printers willing to take on the legal and financial risks of publishing New York's most notorious paper. During most of 1969, Rats came out of the legendary Septum Printing plant of Oceanside NY. Source: Untranscribed and unpublished interviews with various printers, New Jersey and NY, 1969; confirmed by anonymous Rat staff members. ] Rat's financial news from "The Street" charted market fluctuations in the street prices of various drugs.

Rat was perhaps responsible for the most peculiar footnote in the history of rock music. Some recent Internet writers have claimed that Rat was the source of the 1969 "Paul is Dead" rumor, which had millions examining Beatles albums for cryptic clues that Paul McCartney was actually a ghost.

There was an exclusive interview with Jimi Hendrix, and another with John and Yoko during their Toronto "bed-in" to promote peace. It seems probable that Frank Zappa was inspired by a sign painted on the front window of Rat's 14th Street office, originally the previous tenant's advertisement reading "photostats made while you wait," now neatly altered to proclaim "Hot Rats made while you wait," in early March 1969; Zappa's first solo album appeared in October with that title in similar typography.

"Hot Rats" was scraped off the glass soon after the takeover by W.I.T.C.H. - Women's International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell - and its sister groups. A sign that had once advertised Rats "hot off the press" had quite different implications on the window of an office now filled with intense young women - who were there, and intense, precisely because they'd had enough of "all that". This brief summary omits many highly relevant factors at work on the Movement of 1969-70, such as (a) the traumatic effects of fatal Weather Underground explosions, Altamont, Kent State, Jackson State; (b) the mainstreaming of Earth Day and the denaturing of "environmentalism". It also omits the previous few years of the feminist revival, such as the theoretical work of Betty Friedan and Valerie Solanis, among others, who presumably contributed something to the views of some of the participants in the Women's Takeover. Incidentally, the correct term for the Weather Underground in 1969-70 was Weatherman although women were in leadership positions from the early on. The later name is used here out of respect for their contributions to their ill-advised struggle. ]

Women's takeover and its political implications

The significance of the women's takeover of Rat far exceeded the significance of Rat itself, not just for women, but for "The Movement" as whole. Although the takeover itself was both necessary and timely (coming as it did when the fast-spreading "sexual revolution" was proving anything but liberating for most women and girls), some of its political ramifications were deeply problematic. It was partly a cause, and certainly a symptom, of all that divides the Sixties from everything that's come since. What had been a diverse but essentially unified Movement assaulting the walls of "The Establishment" suddenly found itself reduced to an assortment of single-issue subcultures, each with its own mini-ideology, its own jargon, its own protests, and its own separate goals. This had the effect of dissolving the Enemy into a variety of abstract categories - sexism, homophobia, militarism, pollution, moribund capitalism, and so forth, each of which was supposed to be explained and attacked separately - usually as a disembodied idea rather than as an actual center of elite power with vulnerable human beings in charge. With the vast majority of the erstwhile Movement plunged into a deep identity crisis and shadow-boxing at abstractions, the people in charge were free after 1970 to get back to business as usual, and did so with a vengeance. The lack of a viable protest movement was undoubtedly a factor in the world's trend to the Right in the last three decades of the Twentieth Century, with the global consolidation of the Establishment's power prevented only by its own divisive behavior in the Twenty-First.

To recognize the strategic consequences of the Movement's break-up, however, is not to say that history would have turned out any better if it had been defeated in a bloodbath instead, nor, for that matter, if its amateur revolutionaries had miraculously seized power. The question for us here is whether anything of lasting value can be found in the crumbling pages of old Rats, especially those published in that strange winter when the Sixties died and a very different kind of world was starting to take shape.

The March 7, 1970, Second Anniversary issue contains a long message from Gary Thiher, who as acting editor had been overthrown and permanently replaced by an all-female editorial board six weeks earlier. He states, "The first women's issue had projected an exaggerated militance, a somewhat apolitical moralism and total lack of humor. The second mellowed a bit."

He too mellows a bit, as he goes on to ponder what it all means:

"What is a man? A woman? ... Ultimately, this movement of women confronts us with the most fundamental of all questions. What is it to be a human being? ... it compels us to journey down that long road to liberation for us all.

"It's time to travel on sisters and brothers. Though we have stumbled and skinned our knees, though we've taken some wrong turns, we at RAT have tried to take a few first steps. - Gary"

There are very few newspaper editors who could ever claim to have "tried to take a first few steps" on a journey "to liberation for us all". Fewer still, who could say it and really mean it. Fewest of all, who could not only include everyone at the office in that claim, but also back up his words with convincing evidence from almost every page of every issue of that newspaper, from day one. Probably the only editor who could say it was the one who did, and only after he was deposed. However, the question of whether anyone, let alone "all" have been in any way liberated by underground newspapers and associated phenomena, is still hotly debated over 35 years later.

References

External links

* [http://www.lib.uconn.edu/~eembardo/voices/index.htm Link to exhibit of underground press covers, including several examples of "Rat"]