Hello and welcome to this day in esoteric political history from radiotopia.

My name is Jody Avergan.

This day, December 5, 1962, comedian Lenny Bruce is arrested in Chicago after a week of performances at the Gate of Horn Club.

I just like the name of that club, it doesn't really matter, but Gative Horn Club, cool name for a club.

We've talked a bit on this show about how

obscenity laws and the various legal and cultural norms that

swirl around them in different eras have kind of run into these questions about what is

artistic expression and when does artistic expression cross the line legal or

cultural and Bruce was a comedian who was all about crossing that line.

This was not his first run-in with the law or his last.

But this particular moment is interesting because of the nature of the line that he crossed.

It's not that he was necessarily crude or obscene, but it seems as if what got Bruce in trouble in the winter of 62 in Chicago was basically making some jokes about religion and comparing it to big business and you cross those two forces at a particular time and a particular place and you are in real trouble.

So let's talk about Lenny Bruce and this raid and his kind of legacy of crossing lines and what it says about how those lines

get sorted out over the years. Here to do that as always are Nicole Hemmer of Columbia and

Kelly Carter Jackson of Wesley. Hello there. Hello Jody. Hey there.

So I guess we should say ostensibly and you know whenever you're talking about people

getting arrested there's always the ostensibly

ostensibly this raid of this club was to catch an underage patrons of the club.

That's what's like at the end of the day they were like, well we think there's people

who are underage in this club and so we're going to end the show they cut the show off

mid show and said you know show us your IDs and they found one 15 year old there so I guess they did

Nabba a truant or whatever but it seems clear that there was this larger thing going on about

...