which is a lot more obscure than its personnel (Jon Carroll does the interview, and he is no slouch), largely because it was in this one-off Playboy Entertainment Guide or some such in 1982. Relatively short, but right up there with Signpost among the all-time greats in my book.

One of my favorite bits:

JG: Hopefully there aren't as many suckers for rhetoric now. It was so obvious what was happening back in those days. Like the Black Panthers. I mean, what happens when a bunch of black guys put on berets and start packing submachine guns? They're going to get killed, man, they're going to get fucking killed. You can't do that in America. You can't wave guns in the faces of the biggest guns in the world. It's suicide. That's obvious, but how could you say it? LIke, all that campus confusion seemed laughable too. Why enter this closed society and make an effort to liberalize it when that's never been its function? Why not just leave it and go somewhere else? Why not act out your fantasies, using the positive side of your nature rather than just struggling? Just turn your back on it and split - it's easy enough to find a place where people will leave you alone. You don't have to create confrontation. It's a game, and it's a no-win game. I remember once being at a be-in or one of those things, and the Berkeley contingent - Jerry Rubin and those guys - got up on stage and started haranguing the crowd. All of a sudden it was like everybody who had ever harangued a crowd. It was every asshole who told people what to do. The words didn't matter. It was that angry tone. It scared me; it made me sick to my stomach.

JC: Well, it must be hard to be stuck with your own charisma, discovering that you have it and not knowing what to do with it.

JG: Yeah. It's the only thing you have. And charisma is no shield. It's not something you can hide behind. All you can do with it is stuff like making speeches. And where do you go with that? It's a drag to be a celebrity. It can even be a drag to be a talented celebrity, with something to do. But if you're not a performer, being a celebrity could be all negative.

JC: But don't you have people coming around and saying, "Be my leader; tell me what I'm supposed to do"?

JG: We tell them we don't know. I've made every effort to tell them that we're not in a position to lead, that everybody's going to have to lead themselves. What it boils down to is: Who do you trust? Who would be such a perfect kind of person that you would trust him enough to follow him? Nobody I know. And even fewer people want to lead. And the kind of people who *do* want to lead are mostly assholes. I mean, being a politician is a lot like being a stand-up comic. The only thing you have is your personality, and the only thing you can do is stand up and say, "It's me, it's me, it's me." What kind of personality do you have to have to do such a thing? Do you want someone with that kind of personality controlling *your* life? No sir.