Biography
Bob Kaufmann's Mad World column satirizing the news, was named the best column in the nation in the 'Variety of Topics' category by the National Newspaper Association. Everyone and everything, himself included, is a target.
His doctorate is in psychology. (He defines a psychologist as someone who attempts to cure you of what ails him, which may be why he wrote, Better Sex, Better Marriage, published by Wm. Morrow.)
He has been published, televised, and quoted nationally on such diverse topics as the intricacies and ethics of public stock underwritings, foreign policy, religion, sex, and hypnosis. He and one of his hypnosis students were discussed in a chapter of Norman Cousins' book, The Healing Heart. His poetry has been published in several anthologies. Articles by or about him have appeared in Dissent, Ladies Home Journal, Chemical Weekly, Playgirl, Human Behavior Magazine, West Magazine, numerous major newspapers, and many other publications. That book of his, "Better Sex, Better Marriage," is a popularized version of his doctoral dissertation. A sermon of his became the basis for his satirical comedy album, distributed by Decca Records in l968. He never made a dime off that, either. He had his own half-hour weekly radio show, a satiric view of the news, on KPFA, the Pacifica station in Berkeley, California. He was for many years a member and national director the MM Society, a so-called skyscraper group whose members had a minimum I.Q. of 160. The MM Society performed a great public service, in that it made members of Mensa feel inferior. Under his leadership, meetings were banned, and any member asking for one was expelled on the premise that anyone wanting to attend a meeting had obviously lied about his or her credentials. He has obviously lost what is left of his mind, for despite the urging of his many admirer, he is reviving that organization.
Dr. Kaufmann was Chairman of the Board of the Southern California Urban Coalition. He received a citation from the City of Pasadena for his race relations activity there, and is the recipient of a national award for Distinguished Community Service. He is difficult to pigeonhole. In addition to serving on the board of the Pasadena NAACP, and being president of the Pasadena Chapter of the ACLU. and head of the ACLU’s Police Practices Complaint Committee in the San Fernando Valley (CA), he also served for fourteen years as an Associate Member of the International Association of Chiefs of Police.
He served on the National Advisory Board of the Center for the Study of Commercialism, has been a member of the American Psychological Association, a clinical member of the American Society of Marriage & Family Therapists, and the American Society of Clinical Hypnosis (he resigned in protest against their code prohibiting the teaching of self-hypnosis to non-professionals). He was one of the three convening members of the Biofeedback Society of California.
Dr. Kaufmann was a world premiere specialist for many major motion picture companies, Director of network program promotion for CBS Radio in Hollywood, and had many other equally meaningless jobs with big titles and small pay in that field. He was also a corporation executive, heading three corporations of his own, and you can see where that got him. He was a designer and builder of swimming pools. Sunset Books listed him as one of four authorities in the field after he had been in the industry less than one year. At the age of 16, he was the Assistant Registrar of Marshall Business College. He wrote stories for the Blue Beetle Comic Books. He wrote and directed a travel film for Swissair. He was a comedy writer on CBS Television, but that is another sad story. He was also a corporate consultant specializing in marketing and organization. He has conducted seminars on Stress Management, Marriage Enhancement, Creative Thinking, Sales & Marketing, Self Hypnosis, and a range of other subjects. He has also taught his method of forecasting. His predictions, based solely on logic and objective reasoning, published each year for most of the past 40 years -- have proven over 70% accurate. CNN televised some of his predictions years ago. He accurately predicted they would never do it again.
When he ran for city office in Pasadena, the conservative newspaper smeared him by referring to him as 'an intellectual with wit.' He had no chance after that.
On the plus side, for 35 of his 88 years, he was a Unitarian minister and an Ethical Culture Leader. Thanks to all the good people in congregations spread over the United States, Mexico, New Zealand and Australia, he was able to speak out for the great causes, including free speech itself.
In 1970, he began a public campaign against tobacco use. His talk, "It's Your Monkey, It's My Back" contained lines such as, "Kissing someone who smokes is as exciting as licking out an ashtray filled with butts left behind from a party the night before." As that was the most widely quoted talk he has ever given, you can appreciate the insignficance of everything else he has ever created.
Curiously, when he arrived in Australia, he discovered that several tracks of his album (none had any off-color, ethnic, sexist, or racist content) had been banned from National Radio. But we dally. That is a story for another time.
Despite his obvious flair for the irrelevant and accomplishments of the insignificant, for some unfathomable reason he is currently President of The Ethical Community Charter School Foundation, a notable organization opening two charter schools in Fall of 2009, one in Brooklyn, New York, and the other in Jersey City, NJ.
Go figure.
