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Tuesday, August 31, 2004 |
 This 1980 publicity photo shows Ronnie's publicist, Mr. A. Tad Slick (Jaime Walker), CIA agent George Shrub (Dave Lippman), Virginia Cholesterol, (Gail Ann Williams - me), Ned Schrapnel (John Byrne Barry)
After the two conventions in the summer of 1980 we returned to produce a parks show, somewhat in the style of San Francisco Mime Troupe meets early Saturday Night Live and Monty Python. We were not particularly good performers at the time, but we were able to get our audiences to respond in character and get involved in the broad humor. You may note that our portable stage had a blue tarp backdrop and that simply we hung a clipboard with a sign over the back to change scenes. |
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In Detroit we contacted all the groups we could think of who might be doing "cultural work" around the covention. There were some talented local anarchist performers who were willing to take the streets in thift store Republican garb. This launched a tradition of doing outreach to a huge range of "oppostion" talent, from Yippies to members of NOW or the ACLU to various flavors of socialists, to people who said they were apolitical cynics. One of the Detroit situationist cabaret folks created the character Mrs. Banks, who spoke on streetcorners on behalf of the downtrodden rich. The character was a winner, later to be portrayed by Selma Vincent. We also met reporters from New York who convinced us that we should go to the Democratic convention in NY.
I wish I had the video the Detroit Police Department shot of us. |
 I made up this 8.5x11 xerox poster on red paper in the late summer of 1980, after our first foray into taking a ficticious campaign to the convention towns. I recycled this artwork from my very first Reagan for Shah event, a quick parody I'd done of a poster by one of our local sectarian groups featuring the rich & powerful. For the very first R4S event, our anti-nuke theater group had asked to perform at a teach-in on campus produced by KPFA radio, early in the spring of 1980, and we'd been told that we could if we were willing to help publicise the teach-in at Sproul Plaza earlier. Our group pow-wowed, and we decided that the best way to promote something is to protest it, Simple. We made up the Reagan for Shah campaign -- Reagan because he was the ridiculous extremist dark horse candidate who simply would never win, and the Shah because he was the best known US-backed dictator type. His government hadn't toppled to yet, Reagan wasn't nominated yet, Carter was president and we pretty much couldn't stand him, but we were much more interested in the far right, since they were so easy to bring people together around, and so humorous. Maybe funnier then than now that they have power, and have been told to lay low, actually. Our premise was that members of the troupe and pals would each take an absurd premise and do a speech in favor of the R4S campaign. We'd run the event just like an actual rally. We'd stay in character, and condemn KPFA and the teach-in, while passing out fliers about it. Because we'd worked on straight ahead anti-nuclear rallys and demonstrations, we knew the drill. I made up posters for the rally, with a long list of fake endorsing groups. We put them up around Berkeley, and noticed that they were almost universally torn down immediately. Either we were pissing off the people with the actual "Unleash" slogans, or the fliers were strangely collectible. I took a political events presslist and wrote a press release in character, denouncing KPFA and the University and proclaiming Reagan for Shah, and sent it to about 25 news outlets. We didn't have a phone number for the troupe, so I put my home phone down as the contact. The first call came in at about 5:00 am. I had included AP on the list, and the press release had been distributed nationally, so I was getting an east coast radio show, in my sleep. Without coffee, I told the caller to hold for a minute while I got the press contact. I cleared my throat, ramped my voice up to a grating high-pitched simpering girlish sound that had never come out of me before, and said, "Oh my goodness, this is Virginia Cholesterol, volunteer spokesgal for the Reagan for Shah Coalition -- here to support the coup with the power under its hood -- may I help you?" I'd already planned to be Anita Tyrant at the rally, saying something homophobic while holding an orange (lots of obscure protest history here, isn't there?). But that call forced Virginia into existance. She was first an endorser on behalf of Another Mother for World Domination, but later when one of the troupe members coined "Ladies Against Women" Virginia was a perfect spokes person. We learned several things at the first rally. First, we got a lot of media attention. Part of it was novelty, but part of it was that the humor was timely and the reporters enjoyed the show. Second, people loved that we mocked the message of the right, and the form of the left. We led the crowd in a dirgelike rendition of "All we are saying is give war a chance" and the local frat boys throught it was hilarious. That's the third thing. Satire underlines things, but it may not actually change minds. Seems obvious, but for the next 12 years we ran into people who would gush that satire is an invincible sword and such. I sure haven't seen it. At the rally we stated that we were passing the hats to get Krugerrands to take us to Detroit for the Grand Old Coronation. It was not a plan, just in-character patter. To our astonishment, people starting pulling out quarters and even dollars.
At the time, it seemed that raising $40.00 obligated us to go to the conventions that summer. When the time came, my boyfriend Jaime and I financed our portion of the trip by giving up our apartments and using the deposit money. It was just too important to skip. |
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Sorry. Trying this out I had to reinstall and i failed to protect my content. Still figuring this out. 12:30:15 AM  comment []
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(REPOSTED FROM SUNDAY AFTERNOON) Go Billionaires! What do the Ladies have to do with the Billionaires? Just tradition. And to the degree that the ladies still exist, which is debatable, we've encouraged and endorsed the general premise of the Billionaires. We wre delighted to see that the Billionaires have cited our work in interviews like this one..
Boyd describes Billionaires as "organically arising out of the work that we did with UFE." He also gives credit to "Ladies Against Women" and "Reagan for Shah," two street theater groups put on in the eighties by the Plutonium Players, a group out of UC Berkeley. But both he and Jordan keep coming back to the inspiration of Abbie Hoffman, the '60s counterculture icon who co-founded the Yippies and was one of the "Chicago Seven," the activists tried for conspiracy after the 1968 Chicago Democratic Convention protests. That's great. Having stopped performing and organizing before the World Wide Web bloomed, our history has been exceptionally underground, so it's great to know that folks remember. The Plutonium Players was an anti-nuke troupe formed in San Francisco in the late 1970s. In the election year it was natural to extend our satire to the presidential race, so we created a ficticious coalition for a protest event to be held at the UC campus. (I was a student there, but the only one, and the troupe was never a UC student project. Mostly we were activists getting by on part time and barter economy, dedicated to defeating the spread of nuclear power and related poisonous power relationships, metaphorical as well as physical.)
Start here Ladies Against Women operated at full steam (cranked all the way past cotton to linen) during the 1980's. Initially, LAW was formed as part of a coalition of groups designed to propel Ronald Reagan into the White Palace without having to bother with the mess and tee vee viewing disruption that comes with a national election. Some of the other groups included the National Association for the Advancement of Rich People, Peace Officers for a Police State, Mutants for a Radioactive Environment, National Grenade Owners Association, Another Mother for World Domination, Millionaire Mommies With Nannies Against State Childcare, the Peace Resistors League and many more. The umbrella group was initially the Reagan For Shah Coalition, but the Ladies Against Women contingent seemed to capture girlish imaginations everywhere. Newspaper coverage of a parade contingent at DooDah lead to an item in Ms. magazine, and almost instantly, there was a demand for us to speak, as well as interest in the ability to form chapters. We produced a Consciousness Lowering Kit, using a charming technology known as xerox and a quaint distribution technique involving little bits of colored paper which had to be licked and affixed to envelopes to pay for delivery. It was a bit unseemly, but we plunged ahead for the cause. That's the background. For almost 12 years, Virginia (Mrs. Chester) Cholesterol was my alter ego and outlet. In the 90s, as I began to get interested in the Internet, and I needed a real job with real health insurance, I mothballed Virginia. (She really kind of digs the aroma, and it goes with her frilly clothing, so it wasn't so brutal.)
With the emergence of The Billionaires stumping for Bush, and the gatherings this week in NYC, I'd like to wish luck to everyone who is protesting and performing in this tradition. I also want to record a few personal observations, to break character a bit and be a little critical of the limitations of comedy as a tactic, and to say hi to any of my long lost lady & gentleman comrades from back in the day. Let's see how it goes. |
Last update: 9/1/04; 7:02:33 AM .
