ANITA HOFFMAN, QUEEN OF THE YIPPIES, DIED ON DECEMBER 27TH, AGED 56

PERHAPS the most famous song of the 1960s was Bob Dylan’s “The Times They
Are A’Changing”, in which “senators, congressmen” and others stuck in the
past were warned of the “battle outside raging”. No one fought the battle
with more enthusiasm than the Hoffmans, Abbie and Anita. In 1968 they
sought to get a pig, called Pigasus, nominated as president of the United
States. His platform, naturally, was garbage. Congress was deeply offended,
much to the satisfaction of the Hoffmans and their admirers. Now the
episode seems pretty tame. Disrespect towards government is a feature of
modern comedy. But to say that is to acknowledge the great changes, for
good or bad, that happened in the 1960s. “The sixties had ways of living
that have shaped the rest of the century,” says Tom Wolfe.

Much has been written about Abbie Hoffman, who ended his life in 1989 at
the age of 52 by taking an overdose of drugs dissolved in whisky. He had a
love of mischief and thought up most of the stunts that brought publicity
to the movement he founded, the Yippies, short for the rather
sober-sounding Youth International Party. It is unclear whether he cared
much for the issues associated with Yippie protest, such as the Vietnam war
and civil rights. His biographers are divided on the matter. He said that
Yippie politics were made up of “charisma, myth and put-on”, which does not
help much.

But Anita undoubtedly cared, and brought an intellectual strength to her
husband’s pranks. In one prank the Yippies tried to disrupt the New York
Stock Exchange by throwing dollar bills on to the trading floor. But they
did not have enough money to make much of an impression. Anita started to
set light to the money instead, and it was the pictures of the immolation
of the dollar that were on front pages day. When Abbie proposed to encircle
the Pentagon with anti-war protesters Anita said they should make the
building levitate, then let it crash to the ground. The Pentagon managed to
survive the mass chants of “om”, but millions of Americans in the era of
flying saucers would not have been totally surprised if it had crumpled.

The rascals

She was born Anita Kushner in New York, to middle-class Jewish parents.
Abbie had a similar background. Both had taken courses in psychology,
always a useful study for anyone seeking to manipulate mass minds. They met
at a party. Anita was writing a report on police brutality. Abbie was
working in a shop selling goods made by blacks. Abbie recalled that they
took to each other immediately. “If I had been born a woman,” he said, “I
would have been Anita. Sometimes couples take 50 years of living together
to look and act alike; we began right off. She was a born rascal.”

The rascals were married in 1967. Anita was Abbie’s second wife. They had a
son they called america. They did not give the lad a capital letter to his
name “because we didn’t want to be pretentious,” Anita said. He was “our
vision of what the country could be.” Clarity was not always a feature of
Anita’s language.

Of the puzzling events of her life the one most remembered was going to
Algeria to meet Eldridge Cleaver, a black leader wanted in the United
States for attempted murder. Anita sought a pact between the Yippies and
the blacks. He said no and apparently so frightened Anita that she fled in
fear of her life. Cleaver later returned to America, got the charges
against him dropped and joined the Republican Party.

Anita may have felt that she was a poor judge of men when in 1974 Abbie
left her. She declined to blame him publicly, though, saying he had gone
into hiding to escape from the FBI, which was after him for drug dealing.
As Anita described it, she kept the FBI at bay until 1980, when Abbie
reappeared and served a short term in prison. There is some doubt, though,
whether he was much pursued, except in his mind. Anita wrote to him
regularly, and later published her “letters from the underground”. She
wrote a novel, based on his life, called “Trashing”. While “in hiding”
Abbie worked, fairly openly, on a campaign to protect an area of natural
beauty in New York state, albeit under a false name.

The real reason for his departure may have been that he had found a new
partner who later became his third wife. The ever-resilient Anita continued
to stand by her man, as another song goes, befriended the new Mrs Hoffman
and helped Abbie to get treatment for what was described as deep
depression. The 1970s were a depressing time for the Yippies. America was
becoming bored with their antics. A new breed of young person was getting
attention, the young, upwardly-mobile, professional person, otherwise known
as the Yuppie. Anita Hoffman became a sort of Yuppie herself. She ran a
bookshop, worked for a Hollywood studio, reading scripts, and was involved
in a film about Yippies, called “Steal This Movie”, due to be shown in
America sometime this year. It promises to be rich in put-on. And nostalgia.