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are makin' n are tryin' to extort some of it for ourselves. Those cocksuckers! "

Tumble pointed out that the HIP merchants had spread the word about the Glide meeting, and that was the reason there were so many people there, making it impossible to screen out the press. "Yea, 'n they probably called the papers themselves, too. Why else would reporters from L.A. be there?" They continued talking about it for a while, but there was nothing they could do to prevent what was already taking place because of the rotten newspaper stories.

The pay phone in the Free Frame of Reference kept ringing with reporters who hadn't been at the Glide meet and wanted an interview from "Emmett Grogan" or another "qualified Digger spokesman" for a follow-up story on the "Class Warfare in the HaightAshbury." Emmett didn't speak with any of them. He wanted to keep his low profile as a leader as low as possible. He also felt that if any more publicity was created about himself, it would just serve to cause friction between him and the rest of the Diggers who would feel he was copping the spotlight all for his own. No, the Diggers didn't need any more notoriety and everyone seemed to be in agreement about it.

However, when KQED, the city's National Educational Television station, called asking whether Emmett Grogan was available to be a guest on a talk show, Coyote answered, telling them that Emmett wasn't, but that he was and they invited him. He rationalized his appearance on the show by saying that he had accepted as a member of the Mime Troupe and not as a spokesman for the Diggers. Emmett watched and listened to him say, "Hippies are the fruit of the middle class and they're telling the middle class that they don't like what has been given them by the American Empire's materialistic-oriented society. And what had begun as a cultural revolution is now shaping up and heading toward a revolution of violence."

Coyote delivered his statements in a suave, earnest style, and Emmett enjoyed his charming performance because he knew that all the Bay Area New Left men and women who were watching the show were comparing Coyote's quick, intelligent rap and hip-radical appearance on the tube with the dry-crusted, moth-eaten riffs and stale, banal manners of the corny, run-of-the-mill, radical spokesmen who were regularly on the tube. He was colorfully different from these stiffs, all right, and a dynamically-hip spokesmen, but as a leader he was in trouble. His problem was that he couldn't say [end page 296]

 

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