New York, Feb. 26—Poor Jerry Rubin. He is the leader of the Yippies, who had such fun in Chicago last summer, and now the pigs are threatening to send him to jail. He has accordingly taken his case to the New York Review of Books, the last court of appeal for highbrow screwballs. Rubin isn’t highbrow, but he uses enough four-letter words to make up for it, which fastidiously punctuate his manifesto, the message of which is that the young radical movement in America appears to be dead, that the forces of darkness are overtaking us, and that the symbol of all of this is his, Jerry’s, imminent incarceration in Illinois.
Notwithstanding the heroics, the rodomontade, the kinky self-concern, the manifesto of Mr. Rubin is interesting. It seems to be saying that the gradual enforcement of the laws of the land is beginning to make itself felt in enough places in America to make a difference. Thus Rubin’s lament: “Huey Newton is in prison. Eldridge Cleaver is in exile. Tim Leary is up for thirty years. Spock faces two years in the pen. Campus activists are expelled and arrested. War resisters are behind bars. Add it up.”
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