Insight
#16 $3 (PO Box 125 Farmington, MI 48332)
by William Ham
With each issue, Insight creeps ever closer to the pure white light of absolute offensiveness. I mean, if the cover pic of a Superman action figure immobilized in a wheelchair doesn’t make you shudder at its audacity, you’re probably the type that wishes de Sade had stretched The 120 Days of Sodom to a full year. But therein lies its brilliance. Insight has a calling – to rage against the toaster oven and deliver a few good blows against the empire, every one of them below the belt. Who else would transcribe Louis Farrakhan’s Million Man March speech into bad jive (courtesy of an Internet program – uncletom.com?), print several Unabomber haiku (“Ed McMahon of death/ you may already be a/ winner! open me!”), or publish not one, but two pictures depicting Jesus as a pervert? Well, lots of us, I guess, if we’d thought of it first. Yet Insight continues to distinguish itself from the attack-from-the-back pack by raking the kind of muck the mainstream press (or even most ‘zines) wouldn’t dare stain their shoes stepping in – witness t
the anonymous account by a scab working clandestinely for the strike-plagued Detroit News and the interview with Jon Rappaport (author of Oklahoma City Bombing: The Suppressed Truth) that’ll make you wanna stockpile arms and start adding khakis to your wardrobe (it offsets the black nicely). My only problem with Insight is that ed/pub John “Fucking” Livingstone (quite a common middle name, that – was it a ’60s thing?) doth protest a tad too much about getting ripped off by his competitors (Goofus whines a lot about conceptual plagiarism and takes out ads in other ‘zines complaining about it; Gallant realizes it wasn’t the most original subject for parody to begin with and gets over it), but that’s a minor qualm – nothing a tall gin-and-Prozac won’t cure. Insight is still the prime source for impish abusiveness, jokes you can use at your folks’ next cocktail party (“How do you get a nun pregnant? You fuck her.” Good one, Mr. Kozik), and other warm ‘n’ fuzzy stuff for all you pretty people out there. It’s one big fuckin’ smile button, I’m telling you.
