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 culture, popular and/or culture:
“The lowest form of popular culture—lack of information, misinformation, disinformation, and a contempt for the truth or the reality of most people’s lives—has overrun real journalism. Today, ordinary Americans are being stuffed with garbage.”
—Carl Bernstein (b. 1944)
“The poet will prevail to be popular in spite of his faults, and in spite of his beauties too. He will hit the nail on the head, and we shall not know the shape of his hammer. He makes us free of his hearth and heart, which is greater than to offer one the freedom of a city.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The white dominant culture seemed to think that once the Indians were off the reservations, they’d eventually become like everybody else. But they aren’t like everybody else. When the Indianness is drummed out of them, they are turned into hopeless drunks on skid row.”
—Elizabeth Morris (b. c. 1933)