Timothy Sandefur does some fascinating research about a purported McCarthy-era magazine ad. The truth is out there, but it turns out — horrors — to be sort of nuanced.
10 thoughts on “Bathroom Bolsheviks”
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I’m a bit surprised to hear that people believe that ad is real. I’ve always just assumed it was a joke. It looks like something out of the old National Lampoon.Report
Such people overemphasize the importance of Joseph McCarthy, and breeze past the real incidents of Soviet espionage and propaganda that occurred during that period; they portray communist propagandists as martyrs, and American leaders as insidious or as the bumbling offspring of the John Birchers and the Keystone Kops.
And worst of all, they argue purely by creating strawmen!Report
Think of it as supporting American agriculture.Report
If Joe McCarthy had not been real, we would have had to invent him.Report
We can still make fun of old cigarette ads, though, right?Report
Oh hell yeah. And old racist soap ads, and sexist ads for damn near everything, and a really disturbing suicidal pig among others. Make fun of those all you want — and nobody better take those away from us!Report
Of course, the Sega ad can’t possibly be real. No way on that one. It just can’t be.Report
The Bathroom Bolshie was a fixture of the era.Report
If Sandefur is correct about the Mad Magazine origins (which sounds very plausible to me), it would give a whole new meaning to to the term “Mad Men”.Report
I hate nuance.Report