Meet Kenny Kahn, Author Among Other Things

I would like to introduce Kenny Kahn to the my blog readers. He is a most unusual author. This is Kenny Kahn.

Today I will give Kenny's biographical background.

About Kenneth Kahn:

After an emotional, turbulent childhood, which is revealed in his true-life book titled "The Carny Kid,” Kenny Kahn became a highly-regarded criminal defense attorney in Los Angeles, where he has served for 40 years. Kenny’s newest book “Going BerZerkley in the 60’s”continues his life journey at Berkeley exposing him to new ideas beginning with the Free Speech Movement and its leader, Mario Savio, whose revolutionary tactics set the campus on fire.

Kenny witnessed the largest mass arrests in U.S. history and to a new type of student activism. During his legal career, Kenny has represented a wide variety of clients he refers to as "the good, the bad and sometimes worse than that.” Regardless, the community has genuinely embraced him for his candid approach to help people navigate America's complex legal system.
In addition to thousands of courtroom appearances and nearly as many public speaking engagements, Kenny has also tackled an even greater task -- performing stand-up comedy – with his unique, sometimes "Kahn-troversial" style.

Over the past 10 years, he's performed at top comedy spots around the
country including The Laugh Factory, The Comedy Store, The Ice House and The Improv in Los Angeles, Cobb's in San Francisco, Giggles in Seattle and The Comic Strip, Laugh Factory and Stand-Up New York in New York City. He also has the distinction of becoming the first-ever working attorney to perform as a comedian In the main showroom of the Las Vegas Riviera Hotel.

Kahn first gained nationwide notoriety when he defended Andrew Dalton Lee in an espionage case that became the feature film “The Falcon and the Snowman.” "I had the Justice Department, the CIA and the FBI on one side, and me on the other," he said. "That was quite a challenge." Lee received a life sentence, but Kahn developed a reputation as a fighter who wasn't shy of the establishment.

In another incident that sparked headlines a few years ago, Kahn was sitting in a Torrance, CA courtroom with his client who was awaiting sentencing for assaulting six police officers. "We were reading the probation report when my client disagreed with the paragraph that said he may have violent tendencies," Kahn recalls. "My client had been out on bail, and in an era before metal detectors, he pulled an ice pick and plunged it into my chest."

Kahn reached an out of court settlement with the producers of the 1996 film “The People vs. Larry Flynt” with whom Kahn had been consulted but never compensated or credited. In the L.A. Superior Court lawsuit, Kahn asserted that he was, in fact, the attorney who had represented Hustler Magazine Publisher Larry Flynt in federal court several years earlier and not Alan Isaacman, as the film suggested from Ed Norton's portrayal.
Kahn has appeared on "The Oprah Winfrey Show" with noted attorney Alan
Dershowitz, has been profiled on CNN "Showbiz Today," Fox-11 News, ABC-7 Eyewitness News and featured in the Los Angeles Times, L.A. Weekly and
Southern California's prestigious legal publication, The Daily Journal. Kahn
received his undergraduate degree from UCLA in 1962 and law degree from the University of California-Berkeley's Boalt Hall School of Law in 1965.

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Wow, Kenny Kahn is a famous lawyer trying high-profile cases, a public speaker of note, a personality who has been in newspaper articles and on TV for years, a standup comic, and...an author. I can hardly wait to tell you about his book, The Carny Kid. But, I'll save that until my next post.

Meanwhile, please check out Kenny Kahn's website: http://www.kennykahn.com/

as well as his blog: http://kennykahn.blogspot.com/

Cheers!

Harry