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just stood there, deadpanning Carmichael and his outstretched hand and the smile on Carmichael's face quickly dropped into a frown as he began to realize that this longhaired Digger dude, Emmett Grogan, was making him look like a goddamn fool in front of everybody.

Stokely Carmichael was obviously outraged by this stone affront to his dignity as one of the proclaimed leaders of American radicalism, and he did an abrupt about-face, stomping away and huffin' 'n puffin' thunder and smoke about "Who's that longhaired, motherfuckin' hippie punk think he is . . . !" He walked away fast and furious with his bodyguards and fellow Black Power advocates following him and glaring back at Emmett, mumbling to one another that they should've guarded their leader better and not have permitted that "white motherfucker!" to insult him.

The rest of the backstage groupies were whispering hard and heavy about what they just witnessed, and reporters were asking around about Emmett, like who he really was and why he didn't shake Carmichael's hand. A few even concluded that he was a racist and didn't want to touch black skin.

Someone finally asked Emmett himself, and he told them he didn't like Stokely Carmichael and hadn't wanted to meet him, but somebody unwittingly brought them together, and he felt he would've been Iying the way all politicians, be they radical or conservative, lie, and so he simply refused to smile back at and shake the hand of a man he disliked extremely. "But it was nothing personal, you understand. In fact, very few things I'll do here or ever do anywhere are personal--they're political."

Shortly afterwards, Emmett was led onto the stage where he sat on the same kind of a wooden folding chair in which the five thousand or so persons in the audience were also seated, facing him with their ten thousand eyes, and he was suddenly very glad that he'd worn his wire-rimmed sunglasses to shade the pinning of his eyes.

The speeches were routine and predictable and were all sponsored by token honorariums from the London Institute of Phenomenological Studies, except Emmett's which was free. Psychiatrist R. D. Laing said everyone was crazy, including himself; John Gerassi had recently returned from Cuba and spoke about the necessity for a violent revolution; Gregory Bateson talked about the scientifical apocalyptic aspect of the anxiety syndrome from which everyone was suffering; Allen Ginsberg insisted that the best tactic of psychopolitical action was to "make public all the private hallucinations [end page 429]

 

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