Barry Crimmins

I found out recently that Barry Crimmins died, quite prematurely, of cancer. (Actually we ' re the same age so that ' s disconcerting.) Here ' s the Rolling Stone obit, which is quite cursory.I knew Barry when he lived in  Cambridge. We were at a few parties together, and went out for drinks after Mobilization for Survival, of which I was a board member, gave him the Peace Leadership Award. (Which is mentioned, BTW,in his Wikipedia article.) The reason for this intersection, obviously, is that he was a progressive activist as well as a comedian and comedy impresario. His comedy was political. He was always outraged but always compassionate.Then one day I picked up the Boston Phoenix, our alternative news weekly. (Yeah, that used to be a thing.) He had written a lengthy article describing how he was repeatedly raped as a child. He made it sound like a recovered memory and some people wondered if he really had it right, but it turns out it wasn ' t exactly a recovered memory,  just something he had tried to put out of his mind for most of his life. His sister had caught the guy (a detail that as far as I remember he didn ' t put in the Phoenix article) so there is corroboration.He announced that he was giving up comedy to take up the cause of protecting children from pedophiles, and he moved to Ohio, then eventually to upstate New York. I ' m not sure why he did that other than just wanting to make a break with his former life. It would have been hard for him to ...
Source: Stayin' Alive - Category: American Health Source Type: blogs