Rat (Newspaper)
Encyclopedia
Rat Subterranean News, New York's second major underground newspaper, was created in March 1968, primarily by editor Jeff Shero, Alice Embree and Gary Thiher, who moved up from Austin, Texas, where they had been involved in The Rag
.
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 few issues into the fall of 1970.
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.
, 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.
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.
commented in the July 1-15, 1968 issue: "Last time we ran a naked chick on the cover (4th issue) we temporarily doubled our circulation. Thought we'd do it again." In the next issue Jeff Shero offered his own thoughts: "Sex is the magic commodity in New York. Everytime we print a nude on the cover circulation jumps five thousand" and in the following issue someone wrote: "Two weeks ago we put tits on the cover and commented that the previous cover we did with tits doubled our circulation. It happened again, not quite double but a considerable increase in sales—the paper sold out on many, many newsstands."
Profits from Pleasure, a pornographic tabloid, published separately by one of Rat's founders, may have paid some of Rat's printing bills. 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".
The Rag
The Rag was an underground paper published in Austin, Texas from 1966-1977. The sixth member of the Underground Press Syndicate, The Rag was one of the most influential of the early underground papers, known for its unique blend of radical politics, alternative culture and humor.- Early history...
.
Beginnings
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 UniversityColumbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
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 few issues into the fall of 1970.
While the East Village Other
East Village Other
The East Village Other , was an American underground newspaper in New York City, New York, published biweekly during the 1960s. EVO was among the first countercultural newspapers to emerge, following the Los Angeles Free Press, which had begun publishing a few months earlier...
, 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
Robert Crumb
Robert Dennis Crumb —known as Robert Crumb and R. Crumb—is an American artist, illustrator, and musician recognized for the distinctive style of his drawings and his critical, satirical, subversive view of the American mainstream.Crumb was a founder of the underground comix movement and is regarded...
and clippings from 1940s poultry magazines found on the street and used as decorations wherever they fit.
Notable contributions
Among the memorable contents were original contributions from William S. BurroughsWilliam S. Burroughs
William Seward Burroughs II was an American novelist, poet, essayist and spoken word performer. A primary figure of the Beat Generation and a major postmodernist author, he is considered to be "one of the most politically trenchant, culturally influential, and innovative artists of the 20th...
, an interview with Kurt Vonnegut
Kurt Vonnegut
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. was a 20th century American writer. His works such as Cat's Cradle , Slaughterhouse-Five and Breakfast of Champions blend satire, gallows humor and science fiction. He was known for his humanist beliefs and was honorary president of the American Humanist Association.-Early...
, and insightful front-line reports on the Weather Underground
Weatherman (organization)
Weatherman, known colloquially as the Weathermen and later the Weather Underground Organization , was an American radical left organization. It originated in 1969 as a faction of Students for a Democratic Society composed for the most part of the national office leadership of SDS and their...
's seizure of SDS
SDS
-Science:* Safety data sheet or material safety data sheet, a form with data regarding the properties of a particular substance* Satellite Data System, a system of United States military communications satellites....
written by Shero and others. There were regular in-depth stories on the Young Lords
Young Lords
The Young Lords, later Young Lords Organization and in New York , Young Lords Party, was a Puerto Rican nationalist group in several United States cities, notably New York City and Chicago.-Founding:...
, 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
Afeni Shakur
Afeni Shakur Davis is an African American music businesswoman, philanthropist, former political activist and ex-Black Panther. She is the mother of the late Tupac Shakur...
, and Eldridge and Kathleen Cleaver. Jane Alpert
Jane Alpert
Jane Lauren Alpert is an American former radical who conspired in the bombings of eight government and commercial office buildings in New York City in 1969...
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
Underground Press Syndicate
The Underground Press Syndicate, commonly known as UPS, and later known as the Alternative Press Syndicate or APS, was a network of countercultural newspapers and magazines formed in mid-1966 by the publishers of five early underground papers: the East Village Other, the Los Angeles Free Press, the...
, allowing regular coverage of distant events like the Native American takeover of Alcatraz Island
Alcatraz Island
Alcatraz Island is an island located in the San Francisco Bay, offshore from San Francisco, California, United States. Often referred to as "The Rock" or simply "Traz", the small island was developed with facilities for a lighthouse, a military fortification, a military prison, and a Federal...
— and of course, looming over everything, the Vietnam War
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
.
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
Jerry Mander
Jerold Irwin "Jerry" Mander is an American activist and author, best known for his 1977 book, Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television...
and/or David Brower. Coming hard on the heels of UPS
Underground Press Syndicate
The Underground Press Syndicate, commonly known as UPS, and later known as the Alternative Press Syndicate or APS, was a network of countercultural newspapers and magazines formed in mid-1966 by the publishers of five early underground papers: the East Village Other, the Los Angeles Free Press, the...
reports from the bloody struggles over People's Park
People's Park (Berkeley)
People's Park in Berkeley, California, USA, is a park off Telegraph Avenue, bounded by Haste and Bowditch streets and Dwight Way, near the University of California, Berkeley. The park was created during the radical political activism of the late 1960s....
, this manifesto provided a radical planetary overview for the nascent ecology movement
Ecology movement
The global ecology movement is based upon environmental protection, and is one of several new social movements that emerged at the end of the 1960s. As a values-driven social movement, it should be distinguished from the pre-existing science of ecology....
. 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
Murray Bookchin
Murray Bookchin was an American libertarian socialist author, orator, and philosopher. A pioneer in the ecology movement, Bookchin was the founder of the social ecology movement within anarchist, libertarian socialist and ecological thought. He was the author of two dozen books on politics,...
, a regular Rat contributor whose left-anachist take on eco-politics anticipated (and influenced) the socially-engaged anti-globalization movement
Anti-globalization movement
The anti-globalization movement, or counter-globalisation movement, is critical of the globalization of corporate capitalism. The movement is also commonly referred to as the global justice movement, alter-globalization movement, anti-globalist movement, anti-corporate globalization movement, or...
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
Robin Morgan
Robin Morgan is a former child actor turned American radical feminist activist, writer, poet, and editor of Sisterhood is Powerful and Ms. Magazine....
'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
National Organization for Women
The National Organization for Women is the largest feminist organization in the United States. It was founded in 1966 and has a membership of 500,000 contributing members. The organization consists of 550 chapters in all 50 U.S...
and Ms.
Ms. magazine
Ms. is an American feminist magazine co-founded by American feminist and activist Gloria Steinem and founding editor Letty Cottin Pogrebin together with founding editors Patricia Carbine, Joanne Edgar, Nina Finkelstein, and Mary Peacock, that first appeared in 1971 as an insert in New York magazine...
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
Marge Piercy
Marge Piercy is an American poet, novelist, and social activist. She is the author of the New York Times bestseller Gone to Soldiers, a sweeping historical novel set during World War II.-Biography:...
, 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.
Rat was published during a period of layout innovation and had a dramatic look of jumbled letters and strong imagery. Stat camera
Stat camera
A stat camera is a large-format vertical or horizontal stationary camera used to shoot film from camera-ready artwork. This is a large bellows-type camera which consists of the copy-board, bellows and lens, and filmboard...
reproduction of paste-ups composed of often "swiped" graphic elements, and letraset
Letraset
Letraset is a company based in the Kingsnorth Industrial Estate in Ashford, Kent, UK.It is known mainly for manufacturing sheets of artwork elements which can be transferred to artwork being prepared. The name Letraset was often used to refer generically to sheets of dry transferrable lettering of...
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
Desktop publishing
Desktop publishing is the creation of documents using page layout software on a personal computer.The term has been used for publishing at all levels, from small-circulation documents such as local newsletters to books, magazines and newspapers...
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). Photo editor Elliott LandyElliott Landy
Elliott Landy is a photographer best known for his iconic photographs of rock musicians. A 1959 graduate of the Bronx High School of Science, ten years later he was the official photographer of the 1969 Woodstock Festival. His photographs have appeared on the covers of such magazines as Rolling...
commented in the July 1-15, 1968 issue: "Last time we ran a naked chick on the cover (4th issue) we temporarily doubled our circulation. Thought we'd do it again." In the next issue Jeff Shero offered his own thoughts: "Sex is the magic commodity in New York. Everytime we print a nude on the cover circulation jumps five thousand" and in the following issue someone wrote: "Two weeks ago we put tits on the cover and commented that the previous cover we did with tits doubled our circulation. It happened again, not quite double but a considerable increase in sales—the paper sold out on many, many newsstands."
Profits from Pleasure, a pornographic tabloid, published separately by one of Rat's founders, may have paid some of Rat's printing bills. 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
Paul McCartney
Sir James Paul McCartney, MBE, Hon RAM, FRCM is an English musician, singer-songwriter and composer. Formerly of The Beatles and Wings , McCartney is listed in Guinness World Records as the "most successful musician and composer in popular music history", with 60 gold discs and sales of 100...
was actually a ghost.
There was an exclusive interview with Jimi Hendrix
Jimi Hendrix
James Marshall "Jimi" Hendrix was an American guitarist and singer-songwriter...
, and another with John and Yoko during their Toronto "bed-in" to promote peace. It seems probable that Frank Zappa
Frank Zappa
Frank Vincent Zappa was an American composer, singer-songwriter, electric guitarist, record producer and film director. In a career spanning more than 30 years, Zappa wrote rock, jazz, orchestral and musique concrète works. He also directed feature-length films and music videos, and designed...
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".