Who you calling a Pinko Subversive Undermining Liberal?

An Email for United States Senator John Cornyn

“Everything our state has achieved could be ruined if liberals like Wendy Davis and Battleground Texas have their way. Pledge to Keep Texas Red and get your FREE bumper magnet today (Senator John Cornyn)!”

"MAD's Great Moments In Politics" 

Officer: “And what do you think the Primary Duty of a Policeman to be?”
Interviewer: “Why... to fight Communism of course what else?”

Axe, R. Sol Weinstein/Oralndo,1965. “Mad interviews a ’John Birch Society’ Policeman”. Mad, Iss. 97.

"Founded by Robert Welch, a retired Massachusetts candy manufacture, the far-right John Birch Society began gaining members and prominence in late 1950’s. Among other things, the society postulated that Dwight Eisenhower was an agent of the Communist conspiracy, that fluoridation of water was also a communist plot, and that the U.S. was threatened more by Communist Americans than the Soviet Union. Even before this article was printed in 1965, Mad was on the hate list of the society’s most prominent member, Major General Edwin A. Walker."

- Ronald Axe. Sol Weinstein/Orlando, “Mad interviews a ’John Birch Society’ Policeman” Mad, #97

"Reader responses –again, mostly from adults –ranged from charges that Mad writers were “pinko subversive undermining liberals,” to suggestions that the article should be “read by every thinking American,” to one reader declaring that “your incrimination of the Birch Society smack of the same infamous tactics of mass-denunciation that they employ.”

Bibliography 

Axe, R. Sol Weinstein/Oralndo,1965. “Mad interviews a ’John Birch Society’ Policeman”. Mad, Iss. 97.

Reidelbach, Maria. "MAD's Great Moments In Politics." Completely Mad: a history of the comic book and magazine. New York: MJF Books, 19971991. 127-135. Print. J. Rolando Illustration Pg. 137

- O'Dell