Conversations with a Ghost: The Abbie Hoffman Interview, Part 2

This continues my 1986 interview with Abbie Hoffman.

The introduction can be found here.

Part 1

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Mission2Moscow: You once said that politics is swaddled in “perhapses.” What do you think is the biggest perhaps for you – personally or politically?

Hoffman: Maybe the drug bust, going underground. The world of Latin America would have been known to me only through the media. It wouldn’t have been known so much from direct contact. Never mind the direct experience of somebody who worked and lived there as a fugitive. Also, the battle on the St. Lawrence River as another person, as Barry Freed. It would have been very easy for me to avoid it, but seeing, in a sense, my true identity come out, that I am a community organizer, that when I see a way to beat the powers that be, when they are about to commit an injustice, I just have to act. I don’t know how to sit there and watch it go by, or rationalize.

I was tested in the underground. I was tested by having my kids forced to live on welfare. My ex-wife Anita –who is a hero of mine, who when faced with the choice, very bright, could have become a yuppie, could have developed her career like that – chose instead when she was broke to form the Downtown Welfare Advocate Center here in New York, which has remained one of the best advocate centers for welfare mothers in the country.

Mission2Moscow: If you hadn’t gone underground, what would have happened in the intervening years before you resurfaced?

Hoffman: Everyone has this fantasy of opening a small restaurant. I love cooking. I do al the cooking here.

Mission2Moscow: A lot of Spanish food?

Hoffman: I have an excellent way with huevos rancheros and can make Mexican paella. You know the article where I posed as Playboy’s restaurant critic (to gain entrance to top European eateries)? I got all the recipes in my head. That’s the contradiction of life. The lefties can’t understand great cooking. Hedonism is wasted on the left.

Mission2Moscow: What’s the difference between a Jewish woman and a shiksa?

Hoffman: I’m trying to figure out an answer to this without getting into trouble (laughter, then pause). I’ve experienced love a couple of times it’s not something I choose to live without. This Hebrew Jewish warrior image of myself as lonely community organizer, dollar a year, ready to go into any community, fantasies of fighting in the mountains, in Nicaragua, the Spanish Civil War . . . I’m basically a romantic and I can do this because I am in love. If I wasn’t in love I’d probably go into business.

Mission2Moscow: “Come back to the drug company, Abbie, all is forgiven”? [referring to Hoffman’s time as a sales representative]

Hoffman: Or pharmaceuticals. More a restaurant, more marketing,, more like you-know-who is doing these days. It’s nice that you haven’t dropped the name of . . . the other one. More like the other one is doing.

Mission2Moscow: Oh, no. I think he’s passé. The whole project is kind of boring.

Hoffman: Good, good, good. But if you’re an organizer you know how to bring people together. Maybe I’ll promote soccer in America, or like “Hands Across America.” I can do that stuff. That would be a natural tendency for my talent, although my political sensitivities just say, “no way, this is too mainstream.”

Mission2Moscow: You talk about being in love on different levels when it involves Jews and more currently goyim. (Hoffman’s two wives were Jewish, and he now lives with a gentile). Is there a cultural difference between Jewish love and gentile love?

Hoffman: It’s very hard to put this in ways that are not going to make Jews appear more intelligent, because you want to say things like gentile love seems more instinctual, it seems more like loyalty, whereas me, the Jewish male, just constantly seems to be flying about every minute. That may be the difference between the heart and the brain, but they all sound sexist and religious and a bit off the mark. This is a hard question to answer to be both honest and politically correct.

Mission2Moscow: Just try honesty.

Hoffman; Why? (laughs) What the hell does honesty get you? It’s better to be politically correct. Let me put it this way: There is a difference, and trying to figure out what the difference is, is certainly part of the attraction. And I’m not sure I’ve figured out what the difference is. We’re talking about a very unusual woman, a woman who has literally saved my life three times.

Mission2Moscow: Why do you call her your running mate?

Hoffman: It’s an interesting non-sexist term. Lovers sounds a little like the 30s, roommates – not exactly roommates. Partner, I don’t know. But running mates, ‘cause they know we’re running around all the time, so she’s chosen. She’s a very big hero of mine and has a more developed concept of justice than I do.

Mission2Moscow: What are your kids like? Did they grow up to disrespect authority?

Hoffman: Yes.

Mission2Moscow: And they still do that?

Hoffman: Yes.

Mission2Moscow: How do they do that?

Hoffman: Well, they don’t work for corporations. You’re not going to find them in corporate America, you’re not going to find them on the Upper East Side. You’re not going to find them constantly thinking about upward mobility and status.

Mission2Moscow: What do they do?

Hoffman: My oldest son (Andy) is an artist. He makes things very artistically: jewelry, earrings, he’s very good with his hands, extremely good for a Jew (laughs). And he’s married. My daughter (Amy) just graduated from Hampshire College and works as a paralegal. She has a job, but in the social movement. She was an activist in the Jesse Jackson campaign. I wouldn’t call her an activist, like me. The youngest kid (america) has that potential. He’s determined not to register for the draft. He is determined to make his mark in the world as a rebel. Whether it is a good rebel or a bad rebel is something we discuss a lot.

Mission2Moscow: Are you a grandfather?

Hoffman: Not that I know of. I keep thinking about what a surprise that would be to so many people – including myself – because most people still have me pegged at the terrible twos. I’m certainly still a juvenile delinquent in a way. This becomes very complicated, by the way, because my youngest kid has a touch of the juvenile delinquent about him.

Mission2Moscow: How so?

Hoffman: He gets in trouble with the law.

Mission2Moscow: What’s he done?

Hoffman: I ain’t squealing.

Mission2Moscow: Does this tickle you, or concern you as a parent?

Hoffman: Of course it concerns me. It has to do with the lecture of the good rebel and the bad rebel. Robin Hood was a good rebel because he didn’t take for himself. So I don’t want to stifle my kids’ rebellion against authority but I want to see them use that rebellion in a positive way, that’s all.

Mission2Moscow: It sounds like that’s a tough thing to accomplish.

Hoffman: Bringing up kids is not easy. I often will turn to my kids while we are having little frictions and say, “Do you think this is easy? What the hell would you do if you were on this side? What would you do?” And then they laugh, they kind of like that.

Mission2Moscow: What did you tell your children about drugs?

Hoffman: Which drug? I’m very specific. You mean recreational drugs?

Mission2Moscow: Cocaine.

Hoffman: I think every one of my kids has tried cocaine. I think they’ve all tried recreational drugs. I am a philosopher about that. I tell them drugs have positive and negative sides, they can be dangerous, but it is one of the things mass society is lying about right off the bat and the only way they are going to come to terms with this honestly is to do what your own conscience dictates.

Mission2Moscow: Marijuana.

Hoffman: Two have outgrown drugs. One’s used marijuana. The youngest kid, he’s sort of California cool, you know, he’s like, uhhhh.

Mission2Moscow: (regarding Hoffman’s 1973 arrest for involvement in the sale of three pounds of cocaine) Was there a death wish at work there?

Hoffman: There was probably a wish to disgrace myself more than death. Well, maybe death. Those cops had the gun, they said, “You want to run for it, go ahead.”

Mission2Moscow: They said that to you?

Hoffman: Oh, yeah, they said that a lot of times. I was really tempted to go down in bullets, right at that moment. You see yourself as a criminal.

Mission2Moscow: Was this just another caper when they arrested you?

Hoffman: No, it was much more serious, but I was on cocaine, so I was pretty zonked. As I reflect back, sure, it was shameful. I was very ashamed. I didn’t like to have to be forced into a situation where I had to bring so much pain to myself and to my family and friends. I had to walk through the fire, really. I just disappeared. I would have been the last one to say we would be sitting here just like this and I would be Abbie Hoffman again. That was gone forever.

Mission2Moscow: So you’re not addicted to anything now?

Hoffman: No. Except psychologically, like good movies or good food or good sex. I should tell you right off, I’m glad I got busted.

Mission2Moscow: Yes?

Hoffman: There were certain adventures I had along the way underground, seeing what the world was like as another person, just being an observer rather than someone who is so much a participant. You walk into a room as Abbie Hoffman, this isn’t a room. You walk into a room as somebody else with a vague past, who doesn’t have much money, you’re seeing a completely different reality. That was an incredibly important experience philosophically, psychologically, in terms of the way I look at the world, as something apart from my own personal experience. I met Johanna, and that wouldn’t have happened unless all the other things happened. And we’re just very happy together. I’m just very happy and lucky.