Saul Alinsky Quotes
The establishment can accept being screwed, but not being laughed at
Alinsky, Saul. Interview by Nat Hentoff. Playboy, Mar. 1972.
Samuel Langhorne Clemens, 1835-1910. This is why politicians fear ridicule worse than any other form of attack. If it is funny enough, the message sticks and is constantly remembered and repeated even if it is clearly exaggerated or untrue. Ridicule is however, very difficult to do well. Done poorly, it can backfire and appear mean-spirited and craven.
He was explaining one of the reasons for the development of Jewish humor--namely the amelioration of anti-Semitism.
Saul David Alinsky was an American community activist and political theorist. His work through the Chicago-based Industrial Areas Foundation helping poor communities organize to press demands upon landlords, politicians and business leaders won him national recognition and notoriety. Responding to the impatience of a New Left generation of activists in the 1960s, in his widely cited Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer (1971) Alinsky defended the arts both of confrontation and of compromise involved in community organizing as keys to the struggle for social justice.
