FIFTH ESTATE subscribers almost didn’t get their last issue because the Post Office couldn’t make up its mind whether the paper was pornographic or not.
A Postal Inspector Brown called the FIFTH ESTATE office and invited us to come down and discuss a new bulk rate. When our people arrived, the Inspector told them that he had to call the state postal authorities. Specifically, Brown objected to the ‘Poem for Warner Stringfellow’ by Detroit poet John Sinclair. The post office was upset about an alleged statement by Lt. Stringfellow that Sinclair was a “worthless prick.”
Also under fire was the photograph from Jack Smith’s underground film FLAMING CREATURES. The movie still depicted a woman’s left breast being handled by one of the characters in the film. The photograph accompanied an article by Emil Bacilla and Larry Weiner on the recent arrests of three Ann Arborites for showing FLAMING CREATURES and its seizure by Ann Arbor police.
This incident marks the third time THE FIFTH ESTATE has been harassed. In November of 1965 the first issue of the paper was held up two weeks by a printer who later confessed the paper was ‘too controversial’. Two months after that, our new printer said he couldn’t run off THE FIFTH ESTATE because of “derogatory remarks about the President.
Our sister underground-paper in East Lansing, THE PAPER, has had seven different printers in their one year history. Editor Mike Kindman faced special problems because his paper lost official recognition by Michigan State University.
Another censorship incident occurred last month when Thomas De Baggio was told not to sell his paper, UNDERGROUND, at George Washington University. De Baggio challenged the University’s charge that his publication was obscene. The ban against UNDERGROUND was lifted two weeks later.
EAST VILLAGE OTHER founder Walter Bowart reports he had censorship problems when the Post Office disapproved of a cartoon depicting a man with a sign over his crotch reading “Free LSD—Lick Here.”
When Fifth Estate editor Harvey Ovshinsky appeared in New York for the David Suskind Show, he was blipped out twice for calling President Johnson a murderer. If Suskind thought that was obscene, he should have seen our mail the next week. People from all over the country congratulated Ovshinsky for calling Johnson all sorts of obscene names.
The FIFTH ESTATE has not always been the most popular newspaper in Detroit, but the postal authorities aren’t usually the ones to remind us.
Last week they did.