Outrageous: A History of Showbiz and the Culture Wars

by Kliph Nesteroff

“Is American Humor Dying?” asked an editorial in the Lake Charles American Press. “Taboos have killed off most sources of American humor. Only Jews can tell jokes about Jews. Only Catholics can tell jokes about Catholics. Only Negroes can tell jokes about Negroes … It is no wonder that comedians can no longer survive on television.”

Racial stereotypes were censored by the television networks, but so was anti-racism.

a former playwright named Myron C. Fagan. Fagan had a grudge against show people ever since his Red Scare play A Red Rainbow was trashed by drama critics in 1950.

Hell hath no fury like an artist scorned

Fagan wrote Richard Nixon a series of fan letters in the early 1950s, praising his anti-Communist record, but in a private memo Nixon warned that Fagan was “a Fascist and will pop up again six years from now.”

The pamphlets of Myron C. Fagan were carried by John Birch Society bookstores, franchised under the name the American Opinion Library.

The American Opinion Library in Wichita, Kansas, was run by the son of Fred Koch—and heir to his oil fortune—Charles Koch.

Koch opened the store in July 1965, during the height of the John Birch Society’s anti–civil rights crusade. The pamphlets that surrounded him informed his political point of view and he operated the store for at least three years, until he inherited his father’s wealth.

Among the available titles were The Politician, a book in which Robert Welch claimed President Eisenhower was a Communist; Brainwashing in the High Schools, which attacked the theory of evolution; and The Invasion of Mississippi, which wrote of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., “Behind his façade of religiosity [he] is a trouble-maker who gambles the lives and fortunes of his fellow Negroes, for se...

Thomas Kuchel criticized the John Birch Society for manipulating “thousands of Americans with hoaxes and lies.” Kuchel was disturbed “to find many educated people falling hysterically and emotionally, without reservation, for the unaltered venom spewed by out and out crackpots for paranoia and profit … So many Americans...

Fred Hall, president of the California Republican Assembly, said that based on the “evidence of anti-Semitic and segregationist attitudes on the part of society members” the Birchers were the “closest thing to a totalitarian party in this country.” He considered them a serious threat: “Their chief aim now is to get control of the Republican party and get into legislative processes. I believe this group is conspiring to capture control of the Republican party, and t...