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 University 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.
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Famous quotes containing the word beginnings:
“When the beginnings of self-destruction enter the heart it seems no bigger than a grain of sand.”
—John Cheever (1912–1982)
“The frantic search of five-year-olds for friends can thus be seen to forecast the beginnings of a basic shift in the parent-child relationship, a shift which will occur gradually over many long years, and in which a child needs not only the support of child allies engaged in the same struggle but also the understanding of his parents.”
—Dorothy H. Cohen (20th century)
“Those newspapers of the nation which most loudly cried dictatorship against me would have been the first to justify the beginnings of dictatorship by somebody else.”
—Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945)