Andy Kaufman is a name you don't hear enough anymore. Granted, he's no longer living, but his contributions to comedy, television, and popular culture in general reverberate to this day. We've grown accustomed and even perhaps indifferent to comedy that shocks, surprises and sometimes disturbs, and it's easy to forget that it was not so long ago (though, to be fair, before we were born) when that type of stuff hadn't really been done. And so we come to Dear Andy Kaufman I Hate Your Guts, a collection presented by his widow, Lynn Margulies, of photos and letters mailed to Kaufman at the height of his publicly-berating-and-wrestling-women phase, letters which he meticulously catalogued and saved. Nick Gazin of Vice recently reviewed the piece for his Comic Book Witch Hunt:
When Andy Kaufman challenged all the women of America to wrestle him and made fun of them for being weak and stupid they responded by unleashing a giant wave of mail which crashed upon the shores of NBC. All kinds of women wanted to wrestle Andy. Women who hated him, women who loved him, and women whose feelings seem to be a tangy mixture of the two.
This summarizes Andy's character pretty well. He captured equally the attention of those who both admired and loathed him. The following video (watch to the end, if you have the time) highlights his often contentious relationship with Letterman and gives as clear a perspective as possible into his singular presence and distinct tendency to make uncomfortable pretty much everyone around him. There's something to be said for holding nothing back, and Kaufman epitomized that more than anyone before or since.
TROUGH, because he is gone.
