In the introduction for Paul Krassner’s newest collection of writings, One Hand Jerking: Reports from an Investigative Satirist, comedian Lewis Black writes that Krassner is “an activist, a philosopher, a lunatic and a saint, but most of all he is funny. If words were my mother, then I am his bastard son.”

Black might count among his siblings a very large group of great minds, from George Carlin to Kurt Vonnegut and beyond, who have one thing in common: they are all fans of journalist, radical satirist and all-around counterculture jack-of-all-trades Paul Krassner.

In an interview with The Muse, Krassner demonstrated that he still has that celebrated satirical fearlessness. “There is a difference between [George W.] Bush and Hitler,” he says, in wry response to the argument that too many on the left equate the two. “Hitler was elected.”

Tracing Krassner’s life is like playing the 1960s edition of “Where’s Waldo?”: Krassner edited Hunter S. Thompson, co-founded the Yippies with Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin and counted among his friends Ken Kesey and Timothy Leary.

He started publishing the groundbreaking satirical newsletter The Realist in 1958, and since then, Krassner’s biting irony and unflinching irreverence have served as a high-water mark for generations of artists who care deeply about their country in challenging times.

“George Bush is a cartoon character,” he says. “So is the whole Bush Administration really. Of course, Dick Cheney is Elmer Fudd: ‘We’ll get those ‘Wascally Wadicals.'”

Partly defiant, partly confessional and partly revolutionary, Krassner’s satire brims with an urgency that makes it provocative in the best sense of the word. Like his friend Lenny Bruce — whose autobiography he helped edit — Krassner sees the humorist as having a special role in society.

“During the Cuban revolution, Fidel Castro said, ‘We shall not die of fear, we shall die laughing.’ Of course, he also said, ‘I believe in term limits.’  But laughter can serve as an antidote to fear, and the role of comedians is to make people laugh,” he says. “I identify with the tradition of Mark Twain, Will Rogers, Mort Sahl, Lenny [Bruce], Bill Hicks – trying to reveal cultural and political truth in the process of getting those laughs.”

In a time where reality itself borders on absurd, Krassner’s work as a self-described “investigative satirist” sometimes seems eerily prescient. In a piece written more than 20 years before the Monica Lewinsky scandal, he assumed the voice of Richard Nixon describing a sexual encounter in the Oval Office between a White House employee, chief of staff H.R. Haldeman, seeking to comfort the chronically depressed president.

“To my utter astonishment, Haldeman unzipped my fly and proceeded with what can only be described as extreme efficiency. The whole thing could not have taken more than five minutes from beginning to end. He must have had some practice during his old prep school days. Neither of us said a word — before, during or after,” Krassner wrote.

“For years, reality has been nipping at the heels of satire,” Krassner says. “Now, it’s finally caught up. I don’t need to make this stuff up.”