Steal This Hero: An Abbie Hoffman Love Song In Two Verses, One Chorus and a Coda

A funny and deeply moving memoir of the author's finding Abbie Hoffman's "Steal This Book" while a pre-teen growing up in a Midwest small town at the end of the Nixon era, and of his disappointing "coming of age" as a full-fledged Abbie-loving cultural revolutionary "Yippie" during a '70s-'80s that had long ago traded "The Revolution" for the hedonistic, "Shut up and dance!" ethic of Disco-mania.

[Begin Excerpt]

"Mom," I boldly offered one evening, "Listen to what they're saying over there. They're right. America is the Great Satan. We've trashed the Third World for two hundred years. It's about time they trashed us back."

Stunned silence. Burning cheeks.

"Jesus, Mom," I continued. "Just look at the situation over there." I was rolling now, no time to think. I'd shocked my way onto center stage and I meant to score some points, however wildly naive' or inaccurate my historical perspective. "They're starving over there because we've got all the food. They pump that oil because we've got all the cars. They..."

I petered out. Mom's move.

"I can't believe you," she said, her voice more controlled than I'd expected, than I'd hoped. "You sound like a Communist. You sound like that Abbie Hoffman."

Really?, I thought. Like Abbie Hoffman? The guy too dangerous to read? I remind you of him?

I was deflected. My mental wheels were spinning and I could give no verbal response. Mom took it as a victory and turned back to the television. I took it as a victory, too, and turned to making plans.

"It is perhaps fitting that I write this introduction in jail - that graduate school of survival. Here you learn to use toothpaste as glue, fashion a shiv out of a spoon and build intricate communication networks. Here too, you learn the only rehabilitation possible - hatred of oppression." - Abbie Hoffman, Steal This Book

I had to know more about this Abbie Hoffman. By comparing me to Abbie, Mom had meant to insult me, to label me a full-fledged traitorous anarcho-Communist freak, a social aberration. For me, though, with no real information beyond the memory of the book incident years before, what she'd done was promote me to the status of Power Object. She'd handed me the keys to full membership in the Great Subversive WE.

If I was to accept that membership, I reasoned, I'd better find out exactly who WE are...

I stole the book

[End Excerpt]

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