Satire as a Weapon
As a 1968 presidential candidate, Dick Gregory (b. 1932) garnered 47,000 votes. Taking the oath of “President of the United States in Exile,” Gregory declared, “America is worth saving,” encouraging his youthful followers to “find out where the cancer is and cut it out.” Chicago Defender journalist Ethel L. Payne (1911–1991) commented of Gregory’s inauguration, “It was something like a satirical farce, only satire has become a deadly weapon of protest instead of amusement as it once was.”
As a 1968 presidential candidate, Dick Gregory (b. 1932) garnered 47,000 votes. Taking the oath of “President of the United States in Exile,” Gregory declared, “America is worth saving,” encouraging his youthful followers to “find out where the cancer is and cut it out.” <em>Chicago Defender</em> journalist Ethel L. Payne (1911–1991) commented of Gregory’s inauguration, “It was something like a satirical farce, only satire has become a deadly weapon of protest instead of amusement as it once was.”