Popular Culture
- In 1964, jazz trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie, born John Birks Gillespie, made a semi-satirical run for President, and formed chapters of the "John Birks Society" in 25 states.
- Bob Dylan wrote "Talkin' John Birch Paranoid Blues", narrated by a paranoid society member who looks everywhere for Communists, even in his toilet bowl and at one point decides that they are in his television set.
- General Jack Ripper in the movie Dr. Strangelove was based upon the John Birch Society's anti-fluoridation campaign.
- The Chad Mitchell Trio performed the satirical song "The John Birch Society".
- Steve Jackson Games included a mythical "Fred Birch Society" as one of hundreds of groups in the collectible card game Illuminati: New World Order.
- Walt Kelly used his comic strip Pogo to produce a satire that appeared in book form as "The Jack Acid Society Black Book."
- The 1971 Norman Lear film Cold Turkey features a group called the "Christopher Mott Society" that obviously lampoons the John Birch Society.
Read more about this topic: John Birch Society
Famous quotes containing the words popular and/or culture:
“The press is no substitute for institutions. It is like the beam of a searchlight that moves restlessly about, bringing one episode and then another out of darkness into vision. Men cannot do the work of the world by this light alone. They cannot govern society by episodes, incidents, and eruptions. It is only when they work by a steady light of their own, that the press, when it is turned upon them, reveals a situation intelligible enough for a popular decision.”
—Walter Lippmann (1889–1974)
“The time will come when the evil forms we have known can no more be organized. Man’s culture can spare nothing, wants all material. He is to convert all impediments into instruments, all enemies into power.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)