A Brief History of PCC By David Halberstam As told to Matt Springer

It was a rainy day in 1898 when Jebediah Bender approached Hiriam Springer on the street in Chicago, Illinois and asked him for some spare change. The look of deep need and frustration in Bender's eyes brought no emotion to Springer's heart, for he too was a homeless loser looking for any break he could get. Springer explained his circumstance to Bender, and the two enjoyed a hearty laugh before urinating onto a nearby pile of horse manure in front of the old Water Tower.

The rest of this story is by now common knowledge: Bender showed Springer extensive notes for the production of a "pamphlet to examine all which may fall under the categorye of popular entertainment and musical charms," Springer became excited by the idea immediately, and the two broke into the offices of a young Chicago Tribune that very night, stealing a printing press and enough paper to get the first issue of Pop-Culture Corn out onto the stands. From that point on, history took charge and lifted Pop-Culture-Corn into the upper stratosphere of cultural constellations, where it would sip the juices from Lady Fate's loving cup alongside such institutions as motion pictures, Broadway theater, and stag films.

In researching my book "The Glory and the Cream: Pop-Culture-Corn and the American Ethos", I spent years examining old issues of the zine, interviewing editors and writers involved in its publication, and generally absorbing every piece of PCC-related material available in any form. It quickly became clear that attempts to encapsulate the impact of Pop-Culture-Corn in a sentence or two would be as doomed to failure as George McGovern. Yet as I conducted my research, a predominant thread began to emerge, found running its way through all the media hype, emotional turmoil, and rollercoaster sales figures. It occurred to me that PCC has remained a cultural institution because, to quote former PCC editor Truman Capote, it "never gives a fuck." In essence, it is a natural creation of the deep sarcastic apathy lying at the heart of the American dream. Also, it often features a picture of a partially naked woman, which has given me a rise on many a lonely night in the library stacks at my local university.

THE EARLY YEARS

Even though the earliest incarnation of Pop-Culture-Corn was vastly different from the streamlined online version with which we are familiar today, traces of the sarcastic edge and endearing humor which would carry the magazine through two World Wars and eighteen United States presidents can be found in its first lurchings toward constancy and popularity. In its first issue, it featured as its cover story a satirical piece on "that nasty pyle of horse droppings, William McKinley," the president at the time. This early satire relied mostly on references to fecal matter and lacks any traces of wit whatsoever. Yet in reading this artifact, it becomes clear that from the beginning, not a "fuck" was given about who would read the pamphlet, or how they would react to hearing the President's wife referred to as a "manure receptacle." Though the wit would come later, the edge would always be there.

Hiriam Springer and Jebediah Bender co-edited and produced much of Pop-Culture-Corn until 1920, when a rift between the two editors over the publication of naked photos of Susan B. Anthony drove Springer away from the magazine and into the depths of obscurity for the rest of his life. Algonquin Round Table regular Dorothy Parker briefly joined Bender at the editorial reins, while at the same time embroiling him in a passionate love affair. With the end of the affair in 1925, Parker would leave PCC to take an editorial position at The New Yorker. In the twenty/twenty clarity of hindsight, Parker's contribution to the ethos of PCC would be small, but significant. As the first female writer for the magazine, she clearly paved the way for those women who would follow her. Still, she could do nothing to quell the rampant chauvinism and degradation of women which would act as a leitmotif for PCC throughout the magazine's history.

BENDER'S GENIUS

For the next fourteen years, Bender would edit the magazine alone, providing a home for the short stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald (and often footing the bill for his mad alcoholic binges) and extensively chronicling the rise of "moving pictures" through the days of silent film and the advent of the "talkies." In 1939, Bender declared his intention to retire from the magazine editing business, appointing his son Villmont as his successor. As the saying goes, one doesn't know what one has until it is gone, and over the course of Bender's final months the country slowly began to mourn the loss of one of its true original thinkers. On New Year's Eve 1939, a massive party was held in the largest ballroom in Chicago, at the Astoria Hotel. Hundreds of the famous and powerful from across the country arrived to pay homage to Bender's vision and genius. In the words of Fitzgerald, this celebration would "stand forever as the last orgasmic explosion of American goodwill and spirit before the dog days of the Second Great War."

Villmont's years as editor of Pop-Culture-Corn are less noteworthy for the content of the magazine as they are for the role which Villmont took in American culture during his tenure. It became commonplace to catch Villmont Bender's image staring out from the cover of the New York Times, lurking behind the shoulder of President Franklin Roosevelt at some important event. In fact, there is a thriving sect of historians which credit Villmont Bender with encouraging President Truman to drop the atom bomb on Japan with the admonition, "Let's fry the bastards! It'll be fun!"

THE WAR YEARS

Pop-Culture-Corn's role as the "court jester" of American popular culture was cemented by its pivotal role in maintaining morale for the American troops overseas during World War II. In the earliest moments of America's involvement in the war, Villmont Bender vowed that PCC would "follow the boys overseas, curl up with them in bed at night, and do anything short of horseplay to keep a soldier happy." Issues of PCC were regularly airdropped into dangerous war zones for American soldiers, often with a playful cover admonition: "If you're a dirty Kraut, drop this magazine now and prepare to die!"

More importantly, Villmont organized a number of "PCC Peppy Hour Tours," leading massive entertainment caravans through Europe and Africa to occupy the troops and take their minds off the horrors of the war. These tours would usually involve an enigmatic Villmont at the top of his game, a handful of popular entertainers (among them a young Frank Sinatra, Jack Benny, and Vivien Leigh), and hundreds of nubile young women, along with gallons of free alcohol and stacks of the latest issues of PCC. No less an American soldier than General Dwight D. Eisenhower commented that "those Pop-Culture-Corn parties did more to maintain my personal morale than any girly magazine or letter from my wife ever could do. And please never tell her I said that" (Pop-Culture-Corn, May 1943).

With the end of WWII, Villmont settled into a more stable role as editor of PCC, retaking immediate control of the magazine from a stubby young man named Julius Schwartz, who would go on to edit some of DC Comics' most popular and influential comic books. In the years following WWII, Villmont would give critical early publishing opportunities and creative support to such vital writers as Jack Kerouac, Ernest Hemingway, and Lenny Bruce, who put PCC in the headlines once again in 1958 when his performance at a PCC benefit show was cut short by an arrest on obscenity charges. Shortly after the arrest, Villmont announced his intention to retire from the magazine passed down to him by his father, claiming that he had "grown tired of the constant bickering and indecision that passes for taste around this craphole of a country." Taking over for Villmont would be Hiriam Springer's young grandson, Blake Springer, who at the age of nineteen would make history as the youngest editor of PCC to ever take the position.

PEACE, MY ASS!

Blake's tenure at Pop-Culture-Corn would be remembered more for its celebrity ass- kissing and photos of naked women than for its content, but the occasional gem would still slide out from between the cardboard legs of the magazine. For example, PCC staff writer Derek Taylor wrote about the Beatles before they ever arrived in America, in his "Over the Pond" column for the PCC music section. In one of his first writing assignments for any publication, a young Greil Marcus panned Bob Dylan's first album, calling it "the most un-pop dreck ever to escape a recording studio. Bring me more Archies!"

Also widely regarded as a landmark moment for Pop-Culture-Corn and American popular culture is the famous PCC Woodstock promotion, in which helicopters dropped 1 million copies of a special "Peace, My ASS!" issue onto the assembled crowd at the three-day rock festival in upstate New York. It is widely believed that the sarcastic edge that permeated this promotional issue of the magazine effectively killed the "hippie" movement and optimism of the late 1960's, and led indirectly to the vicious murders at a Rolling Stones concert at Altamont Speedway in December 1969.

The 1970's saw PCC descend into the darkness of the drug subculture, becoming primarily a publication devoted to news and techniques on marijuana smoking and the most effective ways to hide tabs of PCP on one's person. An extremely controversial issue in 1975, "Gerald Ford: Putz, Moron, or Asshole?" has been widely cited as one of the chief instruments in engineering Ford's downfall and the victory of Jimmy Carter in the 1976 presidential election. Blake Springer would regret this expose and its outcome so much that he revisited political commentary in 1979, with a similar expose entitled "Jimmy Carter: Sorry, We Were Wrong About Him!" This issue is widely cited as a driving force behind Ronald Reagan's election to the presidency.

THE END OF AN INSTITUTION?

With the dawn of the 1980's, Blake Springer opted to launch the "Me Decade" with a greed-inspired move: selling Pop-Culture-Corn to the Time-Warner publishing empire. Unfortunately, the staff at Time-Warner could not capture the special PCC magic which the descendants of Hiriam Springer and Jebediah Bender had maintained. For six years, PCC lurched along into obscurity, assuming a position as "the poor man's Rolling Stone" and settling for interviews with such pop culture "icons" as Norman Fell and Rick Springfield. In 1986, Time-Warner finally gave up on PCC, and the magazine was sold to a guy named Biff Johnson for ten bucks. Johnson self-published PCC for nine years as a small-press zine on amateur ham radio.

BE YOUNG, HAVE FUN, READ PCC

As she did in 1898, Lady Fate once again stepped in and brought the proper elements together for what many are calling the "resurrection of an American institution." Brian Bender, a direct descendant of Jebediah, shared a dormitory hallway with Matt Springer, a direct descendent of Hiriam. Discovering his family's heritage in American cultural significance, he traded a few CD's and some chips to Biff Johnson for the rights to Pop-Culture-Corn, relaunching it as a small dormitory humor zine. Springer would occasionally write for the zine and enjoy each issue. In the summer of 1997, Bender and Springer would come together, just as their great-great grandfathers had 99 years before, to launch Pop-Culture-Corn as "your source for movies, music, comics, the internet, and more!"

Like all of history, PCC has come full-circle, emerging from the torrents and tides of American history as an unstoppable cultural institution. Thousands of years from now, when little green spacemen unearth the last remnants of American civilization from beneath the detritus of nuclear holocaust, they will find three things: Mel Gibson, Tina Turner, and Pop-Culture-Corn. It has the endurance power and cultural impact of the cockroach. Truly, it is an American original.