Pigasus for President


How accurate was the portrayal of nominating the pig with the DNC in this?

When I read "Revolution for the Hell of It," Hoffman noted that most of it just seemed like a ploy to garner media attention so that the Yippie! movement would gain support and whatnot but in the movie it seems, well, a bit more serious (even if put in context by running around a pigpen).

Anyone old enough to actually remember the '68 riots and how much of it was sparked by the pig? And if the pig ever happened to survive the day or was just turned into bacon?

Cheers.

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My dad was a teenager at time and the '68 DNC being less about the pigs and more about riots. He said it was very scary to be in Chicago at the time because of all the stuff that was going on.

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Yep, I remember it well. Grew up not far from the Windy City. I remember Pigasus being nominated for President, but I couldn't vote for him ("...old enough to kill, but not for votin'..."--"Eve of Destruction", by P F Sloan, sung by Barry McGuire). It was all early street theater--public laughs with a purpose--the concept of the satirizing Fool brought forward to the Twentieth Century and multiplied by thousands. But it wasn't Pigasus that started the riots. As a matter of fact, Abbie Hoffman later said that the Porcine Politico was very well-mannered, so much that he began to regret ever calling a cop a "pig", as it could be considered a disservice to porkers worldwide.

No, the pig that started the riots was Mayor Richard J Daley, a sty-dweller and muck-rooter of the finest caliber, who was so incensed at the idea of dirty hippies coming to "his" town and exercising their Constitutional rights in the face of his mighty Democratic machine that he sicced his hounds on them. It was a toss-up over who was the most hated Establishment bastard of that time: Daley, Tricky Dick, or J Edgar Hoover. I took the egalitarian route and loathed all three equally.

Although to be honest, it was Nixon--now to be considered only the SECOND worst President in the history of the Universe--who signed my draft notice. Actually, he just had a flunky rubber-stamp his name on the thing. He had to much going on, spying on US citizens and running his damned war to bother with putting his own scrawl to the death warrants--potential and actualized--of thousands.

But despite all that...or because of it...we had great music back then.

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