#sayitoutloud Tonight’s premiere! Cassie Jackson discusses white privilege!(Tues, 2/6/24, 8:30 pm EDT) Cassie will be my guest at 8 pm on a special civildiscoursenow. @ 9 pm on “Mouthwash,” John Schmitz’s guest is Jon Schrock, head of The John Birch Society. [FN1] 1/11

There is history. The John BS started in 1958. [FN2] Most Americans saw the world on TV in black-and-white, w/only 350,000 color TVs in the U.S. Few shows broadcast in color. [FN3] Near Kokomo, we got 3 stations and, if skies were clear, Channel 4 [FN4] w/both 2/11

good [FN5] & weird programs like “The Joe Pyne Show.” Pyne was over-the-top crazy bad & fixated on conspiracies fictional & imagined. His guests were more nuts (usually) than him. The John BS was like Pyne, but in 1958 ppl were sick of “anti-Commie” oppression. When 3/11

John BS’s founder said Pres Eisenhower was a “conscious, dedicated agent of the Communist Conspiracy,” [FN6] creative people had fun. Pete Seeger sang “The Jack Ash Society.” [FN7] Future Nobel laureate Bob Dylan did “Talkin’ John Birch Paranoid Blues.” [FN8] 4/11

In “Dr Strangelove,” Brig. Gen. Jack D Ripper refers to “purity of essence,” a slam on The John BS’s “theories” about fluoride in water. There’s “The John Birch Society” by The Chad Mitchell Trio. [FN9] They should drop the “Commies” thing. In 1989 the wall came down. 5/11

What might bob to the surface of the cesspool that is the far right? Leftists are more empathetic & creative. I’ll take one Bobby Zimmerman against 1,000 Ted Nugents. I mean, who plays Ted’s 8-tracks these days? 6/11

Footnotes:
FN1. “The John Birch Society” frequently is abbreviated to initials “JBS.” That might save space, but almost might obscure an organizational identity that earned every bit of the ridicule it drew. I’ll abbreviate it to “John BS.” (Not a reference to the host of “Mouthwash”) 7/11

Footnotes:
FN2. Peterson, “The Ideology of the John Birch Society,” A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Political Science, Utah State University, 1966, p. 10. 8/11

Footnotes:
FN3. tvobscurities.com/articles/color60s/#
FN4. WFBM (NBC on Channel 6), WISH (CBS on Channel 8), and WLW-I (ABC on channel 13). WTTV (Channel 4) was the crap shoot. 9/11

Footnotes:
FN5. Channel 4 carried IU basketball games, pro wrestling, old movies (“W.C. Fields Theater” on Saturday nights), and my favorite, “TBA,” which always was different and never at the same time or even the same day. 10/11

Footnotes:
FN6. Mallon, “A View from the Fringe: The John Birch Society and the Rise of the Radical Right,” The New Yorker, 01/04/16.
FN7. Seeger, one of the greats of folk music, in a live performance, notes the puns at work in his lyrics.
FN8. Dylan also performs in a clip on YouTube.
FN9. On YouTube. 11/11