A Geek History of Time - Episode 02- The Comics Code Authority

Episode Date: April 12, 2019

In the concluding half of the CCA story, Damian explains how Estes Kefauver scared holy daylights out of Congress, and Ed gets to bring up just what a lying jerk Joe McCarthy was. Fun times!

This is a geek history of time. Where we apply an nerdery to the real world. I'm Ed Blalock. I'm a father in my 40s, new father in my 40s needs to be said. I'm a seventh grade world history teacher. My background in history is a BA bad attitude from the University of California, Davis, GoAgs, and my focus was on West Europe and Eastern Asia.

I'm Damien Harmony. I am also a father in my 40s. I've been raising two genders as nerdy and geeky as I can get them to be while still retaining their decency. I am a Latin teacher. I have a master's degree in history focusing on women's suffrage in England and how socialists have responded to that. I have a bachelor's in history eye in ancient Rome as well as modern Congo and a few other places throughout the world. I have been geeking longer than I've been teaching. I've been geeking since, oh, before I was the double digits, but I can tell you the very

first game I really remember playing was probably the TSR Marvel role-playing game where I got to be Captain America and I learned that he knows his martial arts as well as Jarvis does. Wow. Yeah. I don't know if that's a real endorsement of Jarvis or if that's a real indictment of Cap's hand of hand skills. It's a kind of TSR. And boy could we indict them for a lot of stuff, but I'm going to choose to write hagiography instead because I'm that kind of historian. And my own background, of course, also starts with TSR as so many of ours do within our subculture with advanced Dungeons and Dragons.

So Gary Gaga access to blame for how I turned out as an adult. Do you remember your first class that you played? I'll give you three guesses. Paladin. Yes. Right out the gate. Yeah. Right out the gate.

And it has hardly varied ever since then. So what are you playing right now? Currently I'm playing Dungeons & Dragons game, and you're in that game as well, as intermittently as being early father will allow you. Well, allow. But we're having a lot of fun with that, just kind of stretching our legs and really kind of,

I think, we're all about fourth level, maybe. And so that's been a lot of fun. So I'm playing that game and I'm I'm hoping to hop into a couple other games soon. I'm also running my children through a dungeon. Yeah. It's their first time playing D&D and they're they're absolutely loving it. Well that's awesome. Yeah. What are you playing? I just want to say before I talk about that that you got to be careful about you know where and how you say that you're running your kids through a dungeon, because that might get you some weird looks. But right now, I'm in that fifth edition D&D game.

I'm also intermittently and have been for a long time playing a running campaign of right now what we're doing, first edition AD&D, going old school because our DM is that kind of guy. It's actually a lot of fun, theater of the mind, kind of stuff, not a lot of miniatures, not a lot of that. And in that, I'm actually not playing a paladin. I am, in fact, playing a cavalier. Now the interesting thing about that is, hold on,

hold on. Everybody who knows me knows that, I move toward that, that axis of the player character thing, but I'm working very hard to play this guy as very much chaotic good. What's in it for me, as I can get away with and still be good aligned.

Okay. And I'm having an awful lot of fun messing with the heads of some of the other members of the group who've only ever seen me playing the upstanding, lawful good. We have to go save them. And, you know, it's still, well, we're going to go save them, obviously, but while we're doing it, let's make sure we get paid. And, you know, and I'm as much in the character I'm playing as as much motivated by, oh, no, this will look great on a resume. So the kids just, yeah, the bars, the bars will sing about this. Yes, this will increase my rep. resume. So the birds, yeah, the birds will sing about this.

Yes, this will increase my rep. This is awesome, perfect. Wow, so you're like a kid in a magnet program. I kind of am, yeah. So what are you reading right now? What do you got going on? Right now I'm reading Punching Nazis and other good ideas by local comedian and author Keith Lowell Jensen.

It's a study of, well, essentially, like what's going on in our current culture, as well as an examination of the Sacramento areas, long history with the punk scene and fighting for and reclaiming the punk scene from Nazis, who came up here and did all kinds of horrible things. I'm hoping to start reading Star Wars in the history of Transmedia storytelling soon, but I also might just take a dip back into rereading some old Star Wars novels because I love me the Star Wars novels. They're really good. What are you reading? I am currently working my way through a

translation of the Manual of Fighting Written by by Joaquin Meyer in the 1500s in Germany. As you know, as our audience may know, may not. I am involved in Hema Historical European martial arts. And so German Longsword is Majam. And this is how long is a German long sword? Well, the I'd say standard would be from tip of the blade to palmle, hole length of the weapon. Generally is going probably four feet, 10 inches. Okay. So pretty good. It is indeed a long sword. Yeah.

Generally, when you read a manual about long sword fighting, it's a two handed weapon. It is not what Dungeons and Dragons calls a long sword. That is an arming sword. A long sword, the shortest long sword would classify as what should call a long sword, the shortest long sword would classify as what you'd call a bastard sword. Okay.

The absolute shortest ones have a grip long enough for you to get your hand and two or three fingers of your other of your off hand onto the grip. Get some real lever action going on. And everything is leveraged, everything is yours angles. So anyway, that's what I'm reading right now because I need to do my homework before I go back to joining classes because I've been away while you know having a kid. Yeah. And then after that since you go into what you're gonna be reading next, after that I'm going to pick up the next volume in the and then I've forgotten the title of the series. But yeah, it's gone to me, but there's a wonderful historical mystery series by Laura

Jill Rowland that is set in the Aedo period in Japan, and her protagonist is a special agent of the show gun known as the investigator of people, places, and events. And it's a lot of fun seeing the conventions of the mystery genre placed onto that particular time and place in that particular culture. That sounds fun. It is. It's a hoot and itchiro, itchirosano, novels, the itchirosano series. Nice.

So. Well, that sounds fun. Well, last week, or last podcast, we delved into the history of what led up to the Comic Code Authority. And we pretty much ended right as we were getting to the hearings and to the grandstanding that was. The political theater for the CCA to have gotten started. So this time we're going to finish off that story and probably get into a little bit of the legacy of it.

The CCA is something that's very important to the both of us though we might not have liked it. It led to the art form as we know it and grew up loving. So without any further ado, this is a geek history of time, diving right back in to where we left off with the CCA. We'll see on the other side. So it's 1954, right? Yeah.

And you might bounce back a little bit earlier. But for me, I'm looking at horror films and how much it's helped. We're tapping into our anxieties here and I'm looking into that. And in 1954, there's this book that came out. It's a really important book to this story. It's called The Seduction of the Innocent by Dr. Frederick Wortham or Wurt Hamm. Wortham. Wortham.

Okay. He'd been writing against comic books since 1948. Oh yeah. So he had a real mad on. Oh boy, howdy. And interestingly, what I tend to do when I'm looking at history is I'll like look at a milestone and then back it up and see how we got there. So in 1948, he's been going off on comics probably since before that.

Call Years Magazine ran an interview with him in 48 called Horror in the Nursery, in which he said, and I quote, the number of quote, good comics is not worth discussing, but the great number that masquerade is quote, good, certainly deserve close scrutiny. So they're amongst us, they're hiding amongst us. They're hiding amongst us, Jebini. You could almost take that straight out of that interview and put it in the dialogue from invasion of the body snatchers. Yeah, no, that's, or talking about his or the Rosenbergs or... Or go back further during the Third Reich.

There are Germans amongst us who are not true Germans or go to the, I forget which politician it was. He was a dude from Michigan, though. And he said, the very fact that the Japanese Americans haven't done anything is proof that they're planning it. Just that hysteria. And the word used in the last podcast, hysteria, is very much a part of this.

This is all a product of its time. So he says this in 48. In 1948, we've got the Marshall Plan. You've got Communists in Greece. You've got the Truman Doctrine, which is inherently unstable for us to follow. And it basically reasons that the world is a disorderly place, which is true, but the disorder is a threatly place, which is true, but the disorder is a threaten to us, which is problematic, because that's like saying, grass is green, which is true,

which threatens our very existence, which how are you going to not green the grass other than torching it all? Yeah, well, there was this pervasive idea amongst everybody in politics at the time that communism was the hogweed of the political realm that it was this horrifically toxic thing burns you on contact you know if you try to cut it down you got to wear gloves I mean it was this horrific thing that was this invasive species. It wasn't just this is an ideological counterpoint to our own. It was honestly. Or the morality that can exist. Yeah, or that it doesn't have to be all one or all the other. There's a good spectrum

and we can kind of find something in between third, talk about third way liberalism, which was more and out of this later. But at that time, it was this idea that it was like hogweed. I was originally searching for kudzu, but I think hogweed is better because hogweed is not getting destructive. It is dangerous to handle. It's horrible, ugly, terrible thing, and you've got to spend a lot of time on a lot of resources fighting it. And that was the view was, oh my God, if this thing takes root, there's not going to be any stopping it. And the Soviet Union is active was, in fact, actively funding Communist parties and nations all over the world. True. They were funneling money into the into the common turn. It was, it was legitimately a thing, which

feeds back into talking about paranoid. The moment anybody who is paranoid gets any evidence that there is legitimacy to what they're afraid of it just ramps everything up worse. You know, and so, so yeah, it was not merely a popular hysteria. It was an academic political hysteria that communism was viewed that way. political hysteria that communism was viewed that way. Now in part I think from my own point of view, my own study of this, you know, looking at, you know, political history. The Soviet Union, meanwhile, the leadership of the Soviet Union was absolutely convinced that they had to foster communism in as many other places as they could, and they had to destabilize the West because otherwise we were coming for them. Yeah. Because they'd been invaded, God knows how many times previously by like everybody in the world. Yeah. Talking about Russia, not the Soviet Union of course. Right. But you know, and that had that had given them a particular form of societal political trauma.

particular form of societal political trauma that they were absolutely convinced that the West was was out to get them. There's two things I want to two or three things I want to address there. One, the American idea of a world order was for security and the Soviet idea of world order was for security. They're both looking for their own security. American security came through institutions. Soviet security came through land. So we're going to set up this buffer zone. Yes, the war saw the Warsaw Pact is ultimately it's a border zone to prevent land invasion.

From Germany. From, well, from Germany. Yeah, I mean, geographically it's right. It's a very important graphically it has to be from Germany, you know, but yeah, and you know a strengthened West Germany was something they were absolutely deeply deeply afraid of and rightly so I mean let's take a look at you know how Germany was allowed speaking of hogweed Germany was allowed to grow fascism and I mean he had to make a deal with the devil and the devil bit him. You know, that's the second thing. I would point out though that two things,

one, the Marshall Plan offered money to the Soviet Union, one of the first people it offered to, two, by 1950, I want to say, because Stalin dies in 53. But by 1950, Stalin had basically told the international We're not giving you money. We don't care That didn't mean that he didn't say go ahead and do your own thing and that destabilizing Or or just harrying the West yeah getting us jumping at whatever we could when keep the pressure off of the Soviet Union Yeah, he did see the Marshall Plan as being an invasive species unto itself. Oh yeah. I would also point out that it's interesting you brought up this idea of hogweed because I believe the only way to save your garden is to destroy the hogweed.

Your eradication, not just sequestration, but your eradication. No, no, no. So there can be no middle ground with hogweed. On top of that the very metaphor of hogweed implies that you have a garden. It implies and a garden is not natural. A garden is ordinary in some way shape or form. You, as a gardener, get to decide what is a weed and what is not. We can actually both look out my window right now and see some very pretty yellow flowers that I'm going to be eradicating probably tomorrow because they don't belong in my grasp. Because they weeds. Because they're weeds. Now they're very pretty and my daughter loves them, but I don't want them in that spot

hence the garden thing. So I really like the idea that yes, Americans saw any disorder in the world as communist, as a weed, and as a threat to their beautiful garden that they were trying to set up. Now, and their defense. As I want to say, I want to put an asterisk on as communist, as at least potentially communist. Because the idea of the Truman Plan wasn't necessarily that they're all communists, oh God, it was the moment there is instability that gives room for communism and

You know authoritarian anything to take root. I mean Truman was mostly worried about communism because you know Stalin He was worried about Stalinism. Let's call it what it is. Yeah, yeah um, you know which yeah So you're right, but it's a disorder in the world disorder is is Yeah, the steps the steps within the Truman doctrine are are important I think while we're talking about it just because there is there is there is a train of logic and the train of logic Does make sense from a certain set of assumptions? It wasn't it's you know, there's your tealogy, your tealogy, the begging the question.

Yeah, I'm not going to pretend it, no hard of pronounce words. But actually, you got that one right. Hey, go me. But it is begging the question, and here's the question it's begging is, and by the way, if you don't know what begging the question is, I suggest you look it up because it doesn't mean it raises a question. It means you set up an assumption and then base your actions off that assumption and therefore you're reacting to your assumption as though it's the prevailing reality. And it's not hardly ever.

And you're begging for somebody to say, wait, what about this assumption you made? Is that really true? Right. And so I would point out that with the Truman doctrine, it not only said disorder in the world is a threat to order anywhere which is problematic. It's poetic but it's problematic. The other problem with it is that it said we have the means to stop disorder in the world and we should use those means. Both of all three of these things are very problematic and and we'll essentially get the American Empire,

because it was an empire, still is in many ways. We'll get the American Empire chasing its own tail. And instead of really being a force for good, it became a force for order. Now, if you happen to be under the umbrella of what was orderly, you had a 50-50 shot of it being good for you, but it also meant that we were supporting a lot of fascist regimes and saying no to a lot of people who said

hey about this declaration of independence. So it's 1954 like I said and and he's very much Truman Doctrine, the heck out of comic books, this guy worth them. He then goes to a symposium in 1948 in New York called the Psychopathology of Comic Books. You can just tell by the name where this is gonna go, right? So it's December 20th, 1948, okay, the day before my birthday, minus 30 years. It's 39 years.

It's 29 years. But Time Magazine reported and printed pictures of a place called Binghamton in New York. These residents went house to house collecting comic books and then they put them in a giant bonfire and kids are watching and there's pictures of kids watching these comic books being burned. I'm just glad there were no antecedents before this that it would be well you know that would be at all dangerous or troubling to anybody.

Comic books. Holy crap. Now keep in mind these comic books were, well I'll get to the assumption that they make later. But keep in mind these comic books we're talking about comic books, kids, comic books. And I understand like there's, there is a tremendous effort on the part of the State Department at this point to fight communism with the kids. Like later on you end up seeing like communism trading cards, where you see Ho Chi Minh's rookie card. Wow. And Mao Zey Dung's All-Star card, it's hilarious. Okay. And it's a wonderful lesson that I used to teach when I taught US history. But so there is an effort.

And again, we talked about this last time. There was a recognition that kids are scary and that we need to keep kids safe and we can trust them. And under control. And under control. Again, talking about order. Exactly. And so Stephen King's principles of horror, he talks about the apalonic and the Dionysian. Oh, a poem. And that, and that, and that, you know, true horror is created by an artist when you throw the Dionysian out

and it's all about chaos versus work. It's not good versus evil, it's not, I mean, it's only light versus dark because of the way we are primal brain and trying to kind of tie that together. But it is always order versus chaos. Like if you throw out any horror franchise, you can take about 10 seconds and figure out

what the Apalonic or Apalonian, I don't know which one is correct, element is and what the Dionysian element is. You're absolutely right. And very often, I mean Dionysus is connected to madness, but he's also connected to Wonson lust and excess. And there's Freud again for you coming back to the lecture. Oh, how do you actually hear and desire?

Yeah, well, and so I think it's important what got me off on that, on that Jag was you mentioned. Sorry, you're jogging off to what kind of diagnoses. Nice, nice, thank you. Good work. That's one for you there. You know, we're keeping... Sorry, you're jogging off to it. Yeah, it's... Nice, nice, nice. Thank you. Good work. That's one for you there. But, you know, it's... The thing to remember is this is all about ordering control.

Yeah. And we love our kids. Yes. We love them desperately and beyond, beyond measure, but we also want to keep them under control for their own good and because they terrify us. When your son starts standing up, you will have every urge and desire and there's nothing wrong with the urges and desires to stop him from falling and hitting his head.

Yeah, he's already fallen off the couch once on my watch. I'm already paranoid enough as it is. Already see it as your watch too. Oh, yeah, I do. Yeah, I do. Paging Dr. Freud. But no, it's a really, really important. I mean, you've seen my house.

I have tile in the kitchen. Yeah, I've got hardwood floor on the floor. My kids learned pretty quick not to fall down. I could believe it. All of their mental energies went toward, not falling on our heads. you know, and and there were all kinds of big noggin too huge. He's too heavy.

It's like an orange on a toothpick. But it's a thing that you know again that desire to protect is the desire to control. Yeah. There are those levels and I can certainly look back to loves that I've had that were not, I'm gonna say appropriate or healthy, yeah. Where am I desire to attend to someone very easily overlapped with the desire to control

what they were doing, because I know better. Now imagine that on a go at my club. I'm looking out for, yeah. Right, yeah. That's a level of codependence. Yeah. Well, it's a level of codependence. And when you mention, you know, look at that on a governmental level, you know, that is from my upbringing in a Reaganite Republican household and me still at heart being a... You're an Eisenhower Republican. I'm an Eisenhower Republican. Yeah. You know, the fear of government is the fear of that overreach.

Right. In certain areas to a certain level and then you get into the tension within that ideology, those ideologies between, okay, well, you know, we need to watch out for the government overprotecting us, but by the same between, okay, well, you know, we need to, we need to watch out for the government overprotecting us, but by the same token, it was, you know, republic, it consistently has been the Republican Party and Conservatives who've been looking for a greater degree of this kind of social control over the rebellious elements of society.

So there's this weird thing. It's because it morphs from protection to order. Yeah. And that duty to order. Yeah. And that duty to order will take care of everything else. And I would point out, by the way, what was the way that communism was sold in the 50s to, or Stalinism ultimately, was sold in the 50s to Americans was about they will control your thoughts, they will control you. It's all about control.

So we have to control ourselves way more so they can't control us. So they can't come in and, you know, yeah, we have to have our thought police. Right. Because our thought police are benign and their thought police. Or even our our our our thought police are a necessary evil. But if we if we don't police our thoughts, then we become susceptible to a foreign group thought policing us, and that'll be way worse. So I used to play Tetherball when I was a kid. And I'm five, six now as an adult. I'm not even going to tell you how much I hated Tetherball as a kid.

But anyway, sir, continue. There are ways that little people defeated me roundly. I've been six feet tall since I was 13. So, but when I was a kid, I played Tetherball. And we had all kinds of rules. You could grab the rope. Whoever was serving got to call the rules. You could say holding, you could say pity padding,

or you couldn't hold it, you tap, tap, tap. You could say, you know, roping, you could grab it by the rope and throw it if you called that rule But the kids who were amazing at it and who were a lot shorter than I was too They called a game they called rules called no nothing and no nothing meant you couldn't hold it You couldn't do I the ball had to constantly be in motion you could not touch the rope you couldn't touch the top You couldn't touch the pole it was all it was all the momentum, yep, and hitting and back hitting. So what would happen in Tetherball?

I swear this will come back around. Ha, Tetherball. Nice. But what would happen is Eddie was actually his name, his younger African American fellow, his fourth grader, I was a fifth grader, he just ruled the Tetherball court, right? He would get it going. And if you had it in a rhythm and you could just keep going that ball is just wrapping and wrapping

Oh, yeah, you couldn't stop it. He had the angle just right. It would go over your hands So what you had to do the only chance you had and I got this by watching him because somebody else was was wrapping it on him And he's a little dude. He went to the other side of his half circle. He jumps up as it's going past him and hits it harder past him. Now the person who was hitting it is off rhythm because it comes past their hand quicker. And then he runs back and he knocks it. He had a way of hitting it and it's unspoken. Oh yeah. but it was that move Which absolutely reminds me of this if we can hit ourselves harder and faster in the other direction We won't get logged nice and then we can control the trajectory and stuff like that again back to control back to murder So yeah, he he's got kids well, he doesn't have them doing that

This is this is part of a national hysteria in the 40s. Kind of a practice. This is worth them. You can talk about that. Yeah, back to worth them. Yeah, and this is practicing. No, it's a little... Yeah. Yeah.

But it's back to the hysteria of the late 40s. And so they have a big burning. Now, in 1949, there's a guy named Gertian Ligman. And he wrote a book called Love and Death. Titles were lurid as hell back then. He said in this that comic books would train kids like Pavlov's dogs or like Skinner's pigeons by showing them such awful things that it would break their spirit. He also claimed that comic books distort

real life and give kids quote, blood to quote, feed on. It's like he never met a kid. Yeah, kind of like he never met a, see here's the deal though in in my own experience, you know, I mean remembering being, you know, a kid, you know, 10, 11, 9, when you first read a comic book that you can remember, like where you started actually reading them serially instead of like, oh, this was at a cousin's house. Reading them serially, I didn't really get into

following comics until I was a teenager. I was the same. Once I had my own money. Yeah. And I could ride my bike down to flying colors comics by the way if you're in the conquered area flying colors comics is still around. I would ride my bike down there with my allowance and get as many comics as I could and then buy myself an ice cream and then ride my bike all the way back home from conquered through Walnut Creek. Holy cow.

Yeah, it was great, it was good actually. Yeah, but anyway, so yeah, I was about the first I mean the first comics that I remember reading not as like you know following storylines or anything like that would would be Batman. Okay Batman was was my first. Okay, and mine were the new warriors. Oh nice. My brother and I have very soft spot in our heart for the new worries It I can understand why But yeah, no Batman was was the first one that I can that I can remember sitting in my living room and reading and Part of the reason I remember it is because it was when my parents noticed I was actually reading silently

And they commented on it was that I was reading it and my father remarked to my mother. You notice he hasn't said a word for half an hour. Wow. And I was sitting there and there was like, yeah, yeah, it was it was the sudden realization that I was doing. I think I was six. Might have been younger, I don't recall. But, you know, and, and so I mean, my, my immersion in comics goes back that far, my, my real fandom is. Starts later. Yeah.

Now I think that's true of a lot of people though. Yeah, and, and, you know, talking about what, what he's saying about, yeah, you know, about kids. Mm-hmm. The first statement he makes, I, I wanna, I wanna laugh at. Right. what he's saying about kids. The first statement he makes, I wanna laugh at, because especially, and part of this is testosterone, because testosterone is a hell of a drug. The things that people say about little boys,

generalizations that can made about little boys, you give a little boy a stick, what does it turn it into? It's a gonerous disorder, because testosterone is a little boy a stick, what does it turn it into? It's a gun. It's a gonerous sword or a weapon, because testosterone is a hell of a drug. And even in the minuscule amounts that pre-pubescent kids have, it's your thing. Well, you know, so him talking about, you know, lurid images breaking children's spirits,

have you ever watched a group of middle schoolers try to campaign to be allowed to watch a horror movie on the last day of school? I have. Yeah. Like, it was a concerted, like they were, they were getting a lesson in community organization that was almost entirely self directed. They were like, okay, so wait, so you're saying if everybody gets their parents to sign

this waiver, we could watch a PG-13 movie. Like, cause seriously, I don't even remember what it was they wanted to watch. It was someone charmed me of darkness. Yes, some, some, some shlocky horror flick that I was like, I'm sorry, I hate horror movies. I'm nowhere near this. Get somebody else to shop around that.

I'll be in another room. Give me the craft's table with the sixth graders. By the way, everybody, I hate sixth graders. I want you all to understand I'm terrified of them. I don't want to deal with them. Seventh graders are my people as a teacher. Also, that's kind of my level of maturity. My life will account for that.

But, you know, I was, I wanted to be anywhere but that room. But the idea that, you know, lorid, gorg, all this stuff is gonna break children's spirit. Is like, have you, have you met an 11-year-old boy? Like have you spoken one like for 10 minutes? Oh, yeah, and then we his other point after that one was it gives them blood to feed on yeah What I find interesting about that is I Can kind of see there's there's a there's a seed of

Something kind of kind of factual kind of true in that. But he's blowing it out of proportion. And a big anecdote and calling it science. And I think there is an impact that images and storylines and that kind of stuff can have on psychology. But it's much more subtle and much more fleeting. If you talk to a kid 10 minutes after he's read an EC horror comic and you ask him a series of questions, he's going to have a set of answers. And they're going gonna be more,

they're gonna be influenced by what he just read. They're gonna be more lured, more whatever, than they would have been before he read the comic book. But if you then ask him the same questions a day later. Yeah, you back to zero. You're back to baseline. And what I find interesting that I'm gonna go into a little bit more is this is the same argument that's been used

with other media ever since. Oh yes. So. Oh yeah. So the US federal government saw a panic and they've never seen a panic they didn't like. So they don't put on it. The politicians have never seen a panic they don't like. Because they represent us. They, they, yeah. And then have never ever seen a panic they don't like.

Because they represent us. That gets people to the polls. So they jumped in in 1950. Now there's a US Senate special committee that was already doing an investigation into organized crime and I find this fascinating. One part of the investigation looked into the effects that crime comics had. So here you've got you know crime, you've got the effects of crime comics. So you know are we breeding juvenile delinquency into our

kids with our literature. Your detective comics and or the comics that dealt with bad guys being rich people essentially. Which to me there's a bit of a Marxist bend to me really yeah a bit it's had picked up a little bit a little bit it's not without its flaws but it if you look at like the senators the ruling class is looking at the influence that popular literature accessible and free, virtually free to anybody, because a lot of kids would just sit there in the drug store

and just line up, sitting down, because the money was at that time in the soda fountain. Yeah. So they didn't care if the kids read the comics or not, or bought them or not, but they're looking at what the polls are reading and seeing if that affects how they feel about the rich ones.

There's a thing going on. I see what you're saying, and I think on a, I think that, I don't think it's on a, yeah, I think that's on a, certainly on a subconscious level. I think a lot of the stuff that Marxism wants to attribute to, you know, class, conflict, class warfare, that kind of stuff, I think there's something to that idea. I think straight up Marxists make it more overt

than it actually is. Well, they make it, they make it, they make it, they make it, they make it, they make it have a monster. Yeah, that would be great. Yeah, they'll love the hell out of me. Yeah, oh Jesus. Oh, they're nice.

But, no, I get what you're saying though. It's, I think it's a matter of programming versus intent. Okay. I would, I get what you're saying though. I think it's a matter of programming versus intent. Okay. Yeah. I would, I would bridge the gap there. I think, I think that works. Yeah.

So they, they are looking at this and one judge on the committee. So they call these people in for these committees, right? And one of them stated that he had cases where boys had committed a crime that was patterned after one depicted in a comic book. So anecdotes are a thing, right? And so the anecdotes are a thing that work. Yes. anecdotes are a thing that works still. Yes.

Unfortunately. According to him, kids could reasonably say that the comics made them do it. There's ontological leap. There's a huge, huge, huge leap there. Like where Zeno when you near it, you know? Yeah, I'm sorry. You left several steps out of the train if you didn't get even, yeah. And the little bastards would get sympathy and not have his harsh sentence, not on his watch. That was his logic. Was

not so much that it's corrupting them, but that it could make other judges feel sympathetic because, oh, little Timmy red. Poor kids, poor kids, mind has been warped by these hideous little ones. Let's not punish him enough. So it didn't even get to the, this is bad for the kids, it got to the threatening to the mechanisms of law and order and order and order and law became a mechanism of order. Dr. Wertham's book rides this wave to prominence life. Oh it became best seller. Yeah he retired basically on the sales of that book he didn't have to, he really probably didn't have to work another day in his life.

Yeah. Yeah, fear sells, man. Oh, God, I mean, I'd argue fear sells better than sex, and we all know that the line is sex sells. Fear is a hell of a lot better. And again, we go back to fear and desire. Yeah. So in 1954, his book claims that his studies with children that

comic books were a major cause of juvenile delinquency. He's really just driving his home. And really what this was was guilt by association. So kids who had committed crimes also read comic books. That's because all kids were reading comic books. That was the medium at the time. Like you don't see people blaming Catcher and the Rye for Mark David Chapman. No, you don't. You know, or the guy who shot Ronald Reagan.

Well, you know, and here's the deal. This name I don't remember because he didn't succeed. Yeah, he's like, yeah, John Hancliffe. John Hancliffe. John Hancliffe doesn't get a middle name because he didn't succeed. Yeah. Um.

Oh Lord. Yeah. But like, we're not blaming Jody Foster for that. We're not blaming Cacher and the Rye, you know? Well, you know, I think something, again, going back to what we talked about in the first episode of what I brought up in the first episode, because it's a major sticking point for me, is the art form in our culture. Again, being in this kitty ghetto, TV tropes, children's kiddo, kids' ghetto,

the art form is for children. And I'm gonna get to this point in a sentence. Since it is an art form for children, it is automatically less legitimate, less important, less meaningful, less lesser in all of these ways. And we don't blame Catcher and the Rive for John Hinckley or the other guy you mentioned that's already gone in.

Mark David Chapman. Mark David Chapman. We don't blame Catcher and the Rive for them because, well, see, that's part of the American canon. Right. That's literature. Well, because by the time any adult who reads that, it's not going to think I should go impress Jody Foster by killing someone. Right. That's literature. Well, because by the time any adult who reads that's not going to think I should go impress Jody Foster by killing someone.

Yeah. Like that you're absolutely right. Yeah. And adults would have good judgment. Yes. Children have a different. Yeah. And therefore they're more susceptible and whatever.

Yeah. And and yeah, everything else I want to say I think would be better done later on. But yeah, it's a really big thing to me that certain media, certain art forms, are stuck in this position where they can be saddled with this responsibility because they're not taken seriously. It's this weird, it's this weird, too-sided kind of thing where, well, this is for kids, so, you know, whatever, we're not gonna take it seriously,

but then at the same time, and again, this is part of that fear-desire duality kind of thing going on, is at the same time, well, because it's kids, kids are male-able, kids are all this other stuff, and so if this is trashy, then oh my God, that's dangerous. And suddenly we take it really seriously. You wanna, when we do our episode on Saturday morning cartoons, we're gonna come back to this.

Oh, hard. Big time. Big, yeah. So, yeah. Most kids read comic books. This is just a fact, including the ones became delinquents. But also kids who went on to be eagle scouts or fight for the country or have sex with blonde women. They also read comic books, which was apparently the goal in the 50s.

Like if you watch a lot of movies, well yeah, I got to think for Brunette's. Yeah, well wife has a Brunette's. There you see, I got to think for a while. Hold on, we're going to scrub that part out. But Dr. Rhythm was doing some serious confirmation biasing. Oh, huge. Meal. And so the comic books caused the children

to become delinquents. Yeah. But he wasn't done. According to Wurtham, comic books were messing with their understanding of physics. Which I love because Superman could now fly and so he said he said and I remember when I was growing up people had a problem with Wily Coyote. Yeah, like you know straight up like he can't live in because he yeah, he's gonna survive all those falls, you know, and I even remember back when Dennis Miller was mildly funny.

Um, it's so his way long time. Yeah, But he talked about how a child was found at the bottom of the Grand Canyon with springs attached to his feet. I don't think it actually happened. I don't know. But yeah, so he said that they were implementing and reinforcing homosexual thoughts because Robin was drawn with bare legs and often sitting in a very spread eagle, well spread Robin. Yeah, unfortunately you did actually see what I've done. I've been wearing these green underwear for just this joke. But and he also seemed solely attached to the older Batman. And so, yeah, he's orphaned, right? And it's again convention.

And it's again convention. Don't figure it out. Right. And again, conventions of the art form. At the end. Being completely overlooked. But this is accusing Paris's wife of Of being a witch you gone too far. Yeah, you know, it's the hysteria goes to the point where now you're accusing everybody of it

Yeah, and yeah, which by the way that play was written in the fifties as well and this is where I want to jump in please with army McCarthy hearings Oh, I did not realize this, but the Army McCarthy hearings were during April, May 1954, which is the same time as the beginning of the Senate subcommittee on juvenile delinquency. That's right. So this is happening at the same time. Now, it's important to note that the Army McCarthy hearings were the point at which McCarthy himself was famously confronted with the phrase

Have you no decency sir at long last have you no sense of decency? I just love that they let him get to that point before asking. Yeah, like like wait. What yeah, yeah Yeah, but, but it was, it was, you know, him him going after Marshall, he went after Marshall, went after a whole bunch of people, but what finally went on doing it was he tried to badger the Defense Department's lawyer, the head of the Defense Department's legal team, about a junior lawyer in his firm who had been a member of a legal association in his youth that had tenuous ties to the common-terrace. Probably did like a canned food drive to help the Russians. Yeah, well, it was a little bit more than that, but it was, you know, he had been a member

of this association during previous hearings and been shown to have ties to Congress organizations. And so this was essentially in Washington terms, a young kid, you know, guy in his late 20s, early 30s, who McCarthy was now trying to try to badger the army's lawyer about. And it was finally, look, this guy works for me. I'm vouching for him I'm telling you this was something he did well he's probably older than his 20s or 30s but he's been vetted he's been vetted you know are you just gonna I mean can you just let it go you know I mean the the the more political version of can you just please not

right you know and it's also the political version of yelling at a please not? Right. You know, and it's also the political version of yelling at a docks and for barking at the door though. That's a job. I mean, yeah, but you know, in a practical sense, because these hearings, the worth of hearings weren't, which I think would have been interesting historically if they had been, because that would have... Things may have gone a little bit differently in that case. But the Army of Recurthy hearings were broadcast on live TV. Right. And people finally actually saw Macerthy in full form.

Mm-hmm. Being the sweating, bullying, foaming of the mouth, blow hard that he was, and that image was what led to his downfall center by the Senate and everything else. It's interesting that you're talking about the, you know, worth them eventually going to that place where he was accusing everybody, you know, of everything. Yeah. Yeah. And, and that was basically what led to McCarthy having the same fate. It's, it's, it's the same cycle. It is. It's, it's, it's, it's, it's, the same cycle. You thought it out. You can, oh, it's a really jacked up version of the hero's journey. Yeah. And, you know, I like that. That's good.

And people with more letters after their name and us and more area edition have mapped it out. I mean, it's a known, it's going to be a quarter of a thing. It's like a quarter of a thing. But it was interesting to me doing my admittedly not as thorough as I'd like research for this, that these things happen at the same time. That's a really good point. That this panic about juvenile delinquency which is tied to this kind of nebulous thing about you

know organized crime. Right. You know this particular panic about the enemy within. Right. Being our kids who we have to keep control on, is going on in tandem. I mean, at the same time as the very overt, because the fear of your kids is something that's covert. It's something you don't really, you say, I'm worried about kids being turned into delinquents, what you don't say is, I'm afraid of my kids. I'm afraid of other people's kids.

Because that's not socially acceptable. It can be implied. It can be implied and it can be sub-rosa, but it's not anything that you're ever going to openly admit to unless you're a schoolteacher. I wish you all talked to your peers and say, dude, they're crazy. I would like to point out that the non-latent teacher has used more Latin in our podcast than the Latin teacher. Yeah, please carry on. Okay, not to work.

Because you know in bits and phrases, it's very useful as like trying to use it as spoken language. You might as well use it as battlefield code. Oh, wait, throwins did. So, um, and I got sidetracked by my witty remark about Battlefield code, but you know, the fear of your children, your fear of other people's children is not something you can say aloud. The fear of, oh my god, the commies is something you can say out loud. And that was what grabbed the big time front page headlines. The worth of stuff was going on at the exact same time. It was part of the same neurosis. Same zeitgeist. Same zeitgeist.

I'm gonna say mass neurosis because I think you're better. You know, it was part of the same set of subconscious fears. But you know, it would have been varied on page four, page five. It wasn't been. It was part of the same set of subconscious fears, but it would have been varied on page four, page five. It wasn't been- That's the funniest. Yes, near the funny pages. So the biggest thing I wanted to point out in regard to the McCarthy hearings

and their relationship to this is that these are mirror images of each other. Absolutely. These are, I mean, not even mirror images because that implies reversal. These are carbon copies, almost. This is elder and younger. Yeah. Basically. So the night wing to the Batman as well. Yes, as it were. Wortham also went off on Wonder Woman, said that she was giving little girls the wrong ideas about a woman's place in society. Wow. Which I always thought I always thought thought that was hilarious because like her one weakness is if she's ever bound

up by a man which seemed to happen every other comic. Well, you know, that's because her writer had a thing for that. Oh yeah, yeah. Which is, which is in fact documented. Yeah. You know, there's a movie out about it. There's a movie out there. Several books about it.

Oh yeah. And connecting her to Mars Sanger, there's all kinds of cool shit. Yeah, and the weird relationships that he had. He had with his mistress and her cousin or something like that. Well, the deal was he was married. I mean, this is my understanding of it. I'm sure, you know, we'll get commentary about me screwing this up. But my understanding of it is. I love your optimism. The people will listen to this. Well, you know, hey, I'm gonna plug the hell out of it. So we'll see.

And plenty of my friends are hardcore nerds about this stuff. So. Well, you know, hey, yeah, I'm gonna plug the hell out of it So we'll see and play my friends are hardcore nerds about this stuff. So But you know, he was married. He had they they had children and the mistress was their baby sir right and and what is interesting about that is he was For the time period really open about the fact that like, oh yeah, no, I'm sleeping with both of them. And they were both cool with it too. They were both cool with it. I think the historical record says

they were both cool with it. I would like based on the fact that most, I'd really like to read, you know, cause again, it's still the 50s. And as much as he's, ories into the fifties, as much as he was a very feminist kind of thinker about what a woman's role ought to be in not confining girls to the kitchen and all that stuff. He was still the man of the house.

He's also still, he's the guy with the ukulele at the party telling women what feminism is. Yeah, you know, I kind of get that feeling. And I really like to see some kind of a primary source like a dire entry from his wife or something, talking about her being okay with it. Yeah, that's a really good point. That's a really good point. I couldn't find worth them saying anything about BD and SNM, oddly enough.

Oddly enough. So there are some people that fought back, publishers of comic comic books because again, there's no CCA yet. Well as as part of the hearings The publisher of EC Mm-hmm. This is my favorite my favorite anecdote about the hearings and you probably got it in your notes somewhere But he was questioned by a senator, you know holding up, you know a placard of of you know a comic book cover Yes, the real the really famous one with the blonde woman, having been beheaded in the heart of his favorite frame. And having this back and forth about,

would you not say this is in poor taste? He says, well, I think it could be. And the details that he mentions are ones that he had actually told the illustrator to remove from the cover before it got, because the original cover had actually included all of these elements there in Port Aces. It's like that scene from spinal taps. Yeah, you know, yeah.

You should have seen the cover they wanted. Yeah, oh my god. Yeah, you know, and so, yeah, I just, yeah, it's it's interesting that well Yeah, people people did fight back and and well and some of the voices of reason were actual senators, which is rare But they said that his study only studied juvenile delinquents without comparing them to the other kids So his response was yeah, his response was so classically 50s though He said the kids who didn't become delinquents may even be worse off. What the fuck?

I know. Like, how is it? I mean, right now in this podcast, I just used language that, you know, I was raised not to. Well, I'm not worried about that. But like, you know that people in that room had to think that, and it was the 50s. Well, he was doubling down.

I mean, like, he was doubling down. And like, because he was hoping some people would be like, no, he's probably right. Yeah, because we're all afraid of kids too. Because we're all, yeah, because, but like, how is it? Right. That we don't have, what I wanna know is,

how do we not have the recording of somebody actually clamping a hand over a mic to shout what the fuck I mean to that point like how do we not hear somebody to back or going are you fucking kidding you can't have it both ways like like yeah how do you have you no sense of building have you have you know yeah so have you no sense of reality now what I want to come back to is the horror comics. Yeah, yeah. Because the horror comics are one of the big reads, because again, there's no superhero comics, really.

Yeah. There's a few. As a point, there's. But it's mostly horror comics, right? And this is what's really, really getting pumped out. At the time, there were a lot of horror comic books on the market, and they were showing pretty gruesome things. But what nobody seemed to get was that the kids weren't reading those. The adults were.

Well, because no adult wanted to admit to reading comic books. Because. Because. Yeah, you're absolutely get away. Get away, say you're not the art. Yeah. But this goes back to what you're talking about with the Japanese comics, right? Yeah.

So here's the thing. During World War II, a lot of soldiers were reading comic books. It was a good morale booster. It was good for entertainment. When they came back, these soldiers kept reading comic books. Now their tastes had changed. They don't need to read about a war. They've been through it.

So now, and again, they want to read about what they just saw with Susie at the five in dime and stuff like that. So it was mainly for this audience that horror comics were even written. They weren't written for the kids. Mom and dad still had a say in what little Timmy brought home. Mom still cleaned Timmy's room.

Yeah. I found these comics. I don't ever want you buying them again. He'd either find a better hiding place or he'd only read them over there or he would bring home Archie and Jughead, you know. Still, the US government was poisoned ready to overreact on behalf of children,

like they always do, which is kind of quaint now that we have. Except in terms of gun violence. Well, there's that. It's quaint now because we have kids who've been abducted and put into detention facilities away from their parents with no real time table or infrastructure to return them by the very same government. So you know it's maybe that was when America was great. Um but were them testified before us as the senate? Other people did too including people in the comic book industry

but were them he's a psychologist he knows how to work a room he knows how to whip a And he's a psychologist, he knows how to work a room, he knows how to whip a fear, he totally outclass them. And also, the people who were testifying for the comic books were businessmen. They were the business side of the comic book industry, they weren't the artists, very few artists actually testified. And it was mostly the guys at the head of the comic book companies who didn't know what they were publishing, they were just counting the beans. The Senate committee advised the comic book companies that, quote, a competent job of self-policing within the industry will achieve much. Now,

15 years later, you get the MPAA doing the exact same thing for movies. Now, what I want to point out here, quick, is the decision to found the CCA actually happened prior to all of these hearings because people in the publishing industry had gotten wind of the fact, caught the sense of it coming and said, okay, look, they're going to clamp down on us. We don't want to deal with them actually regulating any of the stuff, so we got to do something. They agreed and had started forming the CCA even before worth them got his chance to get up in front of the tape recorder microphones

and and not TV cameras but you know the press. Yep. To do his dog and pony show. So October 26th 1954 the CCA starts. It prohibits the following things. Graphic depictions of violence, Gore, sexual innuendo, vampires, werewolves, zombies, ghouls, sexual abnormalities, seduction, etc. So that means the horror industry is wiped out of comethicals. Which leaves a vacuum for superheroes ultimately again and you'll start to see that popping back up. In things like journey into mystery and tales of suspense, suddenly you have superheroes in them instead of these one-off stories.

It discouraged any, and here's the fun one, any challenge to authority, any depiction of police is being corrupt, politicians is being mean, judges is being dirty, so all the things that the superheroes fought against in the 40s wiped out because order. Also, it encouraged romance, but only if it led to marriage. And also the CCA said that good must triumph over evil in every instance. This is where superheroes are made, man. Like they come back and in the beginning, like I have an app on my iPad and I can read all the Marvel comics, ever-basically. It's wonderful. I've been reading them all from the beginning and they're shit. They're awful. They really are.

Well, you know, if there's no chance of the hero losing, then there's no tension. There's no stakes. And there's no carry over either. That's the thing. It all has to be solved. And what happens is in the last three panels, they solve it every time.

And it is, oh my god, it's so unimaginative, but that's what they had to deal with. In 1955, the Senate Committee gives its final report stating that it approves of the CCA, even though it represents, and not even though, but because it represents, quote, steps in the right direction. Now, this does not mean that the Senate agreed with Wurtham completely. They saw problems in his study. They basically law makers back then actually read about things and thought about things. So they didn't fully endorse Wurtham's conclusions about the effects of comic books on children.

And they pointed out, dude, you only studied juvenile delinquents. Yeah. The Senate committee did agree, though, that comic books might have an unhealthy effect on kids that were already emotionally disturbed or morally delinquent, but they also said it's nothing conclusive. It is only intuitive, and you could kind of make that argument intuitively, but I don't know that you want to legislate to that. No. And they didn't, to their credit, they did. It was, oh, you're going to do it yourself. You fixed it, we don't need to do anything So they backed the self policing by the comic book publishers their final report also issued a warning to comic book companies Saying if this doesn't work that we're gonna revisit the issue and by whatever means necessary

We will quote prevent our nation's young from being harmed from crime and horror comic books so young from being harmed from crime and horror comic books. So essentially, we can't prove that you're bad for kids, but we're assuming that you're bad for kids who are also already on the fence. And unless you fix what we can't prove is bad for kids, we're going to come back and fix you. Wow. Yeah. Talking about having it both ways.

Yeah. It's politically. Yeah. Well. So CCA puts its stamp on every comic book that meets its guidelines, which means that horror comics don't meet these guidelines. Graphic depictions of violence, gore, sexual, and unindo. Vampires, werewolf zombies, ghouls, sexual abnormalities, etc. don't get you the stamp. And here's how it works.

If you don't have the stamp, stores and newsstands won't accept your comic books, they won't put them on the shelves, they won't sell. So now the publisher eats all the costs of publication and they're not gonna do. Well, they're not gonna. Yeah, if they're not gonna make any money off of it if they can't distribute them. Yeah, well and or comic publishers go out of business. Well, yeah, and and for and for the art form. Mm-hmm. And for the medium. Mm-hmm. Maybe is a better term than art form, but for the medium. This is the beginning of where we get modern comic book culture, because in the 60s, 70s, and later, when storylines start evolving again,

that you start seeing people wanting to read about more mature themes about other stuff. You know, Marl famously, you know, Stanley famously got a waiver to write about drug addiction. Yeah, and it was a horrible episode. Well, it's still a style. It's a milestone. And and what you then get is, well, you know, comic books

aren't something that they're this special thing. They're this weird, not really magazines, not really cartoons, not, and you start seeing the beginnings of comic book stores. Right. Rather than comic books being on the shelf with other magazines. Good point. Speaking of magazines.

Yeah. Others adapted. They're like, oh, it's a comic book cut authority. It's not a magazine authority. So, mad magazine became mad magazine and CC had no authority over that. Yeah, and so they could be very subversive. Yeah, way thumb their nose at authority. Their very existence was subversive. Never mind the content. Bill Gaines, who had actually been a teacher and had argued in front of the Senate committee that comics didn't have a negative impact and he actually brought, you know, information. He gets moving on that. It's really, horror comics get really toned down. Magazines just go crazy, they have fun, but it's very vanilla. There's no real

horror. Marvel Comics was one of the companies that was still producing horror comics as well as quote sci-fi comics, but they're really tame. I mean, really, really tame. And they start going more for superheroes. And this really sets the tone for the next 40 years. Yeah. So yeah, it's like you're saying, this is where you get your comic book culture in a way. Now I told you at the beginning of the last podcast, the other title is this, why does my dad hate beginning of the last podcast. Yes. The other title is this, Why Does My Dad Hate Adelaide Stevenson?

Yes. I've been waiting eagerly to learn about this. So at these committee hearings, there is a publicity hungry senator who wants desperately to be president. His name is Estes Caffalver. Caffalver. Caffalver.

Caffalver, how are you saying it? Yeah. I'm a Latinist. Yeah. We don't have a letter K in line. Yeah, it's all right. Key Fawver. Key Fawver. How do you say it? Yeah. I'm a Latinist. Yeah. We don't have a letter K in Latin. Yeah, it's all right. He's from Tennessee. Yes.

Interesting thing there. He rails against, quote, indecent and scurrilous literature. And he points out that the crime rate is up, particularly in areas associated with juveniles. And this is burglary and auto theft. And he was right. These things are happening. And it goes back to that fear of the children that he talked about now again he doesn't make any really worthwhile claims of his causation but

just correlation and he totally steals the spotlight from worth them so worth them things he's gonna make himself and yeah it turned into kiffavers I mean yeah kiffa were wound up getting the chairmanship of the hearings, if I remember correctly. Well, and he's a weird guy, and I'm going to get to him a little bit. But he is your 1950s conformity conscious American politician, and he sets himself up cartoonishly at times, which is fun, against what he sees as like this seamy underbelly of popular culture of the 50s.

He's the dad who bans dancing in flash dance. Yeah. He's that guy, right? That's a good analogy. Yeah. The weird thing is, is he's one of only three Democratic senators who refused to sign the Southern Manifesto. Southern Manifesto is the document that Southern senators and congressmen said that they wrote down here is what we're going to do. We're going to oppose Brown versus Board with the laws, as far as they could. Amongst other dumb shit that it said, it is destroying Brown versus Board. It is destroying the amicable relations between the whites and the Negro races that have been created through 90 years of patient effort by the good people of both races. It has planted hatred and suspicion where there has been here to four friendship

and understanding. Oh, fuck that. He didn't sign it. Okay. The other two guys who didn't sign it. Yeah. Al Gore senior. Okay. And Lyndon Johnson. Wow. There were a couple of Republicans that didn't sign it as well, but this is about key followers. So he also was, and there were several House of Raps guys that didn't know about it, doesn't. He was on the organized crime committees. Yes.

Now, if you've seen Godfather Part Two, that's the committees. Yeah. And that's what ties into the comic books, right? He had jobs. He actually was a populist who cared about the people. He was doing good governance. He overreached here. Here he overreached. I think he got tricked. Or not tricked, but like it's kind of like you can lead a dog to do the wrong thing. Yeah, I think that's what you did. Yeah, I think that's a good analogy. And he was a weird dude. Like

in a lot of this, Like he often held hearings on things that didn't warrant in-depth investigations. For instance, he had the switchblade hearings. Which... Switchblade knives, oh god. Yeah, he had this. And he brandished for the press various lethal objects, including bayonets

to talk about how dangerous switchblades are. Okay, because they're pointy. Yes, they're both... Nifey? What do they have in head? I guess they're both naifi. What do they have in? Yeah, I mean, so the New Yorker said that his activity in the comic book hearings was quote, an investigation conducted by the senators that had been compared to a court run by kangaroos. And the analogy is not unfair, except possibly to the kangaroos.

The normal rules of evidence do not apply in congressional hearings. Badgering is appreciated. The verdict has frequently been arrived out in advance. The Senate committee was determined to indict the makers of comic books and the hearing was designed as a spectacle. That's keyfower. What are you going to say? Well, just, yeah, my reading about keyfver is he's a complex guy.

Side note in regard to his role politically, he was also involved in the destruction of a democratic machine in his state. Yeah. Because he had to have guns that... Yeah, well, there's that, but there's also just on a more basic political note. There's a democratic machine in his state wound up trying to come for him because they didn't appreciate his law and order. There was something about his particular brand of, you know, and for law and order kind

of record. Right. And they wound up trying to get him unelected. They threw all their support behind his opponent and he used that as a weapon in getting reelected. He wound a famously wound. I don't remember the name of the guy running the machine, but the guy running the machine basically had said, this guy is, he used the term of pet coon.

And so Keith Falver wore a coon skin cap to oppress press conference cold brain wore a coon skin cap to a press conference or put it on in front of the press and said I may be a pet coon but I hate his pet coon nice as an indictment against his opponents, who was, and it's a remarkable thing looking back on all of that with 50, 60 years of hindsight, how much our political discourse has changed. And in some ways how much it hasn't.

Yeah. You know, that, you know, so reminder to me as a historian, that this is a different time. You know, we don't think a lot of the time about the 50s, you know, modern American history. Right. Doesn't get treated like a different time.

True. But dude, it was. And I think that's something that I take away from talking about, Kifalver, is he was a politician of a completely different era. Yeah. You know. Well, and he was out of step with politicians at the time, too.

Yeah. Hence his success. Yeah. So my dad read comics both from before and after the code because my dad was born and I believe 42. So he's reading comic books through his childhood. And so like, by the time he's 12, that's when the code kicks in, right? He didn't like that the government got into that stuff and he pinned it all on keyfower. Okay. Okay.

Okay. Keyfower had run for president twice, losing the Democratic nomination in 52 and 56. He lost to Adelaide Stevenson both times. And in 1956, he becomes Adelaide Stevenson's vice presidential running mate. Now, my dad's older brother is two years older than him, so he would have been old enough to vote. I'm not sure if he did, but my dad was still two years out. My dad was a lifelong Democrat.

All his life, I mean, he grew up in San Francisco. It's a very democratic town. The only time he wasn't was when Reagan ran against Mondale. And he told me only recently He's like your mom would kill me if The funny thing is my mom also told me you'd have to kill me if you find it. Yeah, and I'm like My dad was a lifelong Democrat. He was anti-Adley Stevenson Because of his connection to Kiphalver so 1963 Kiphalver dies

I told you, the journey was much more worth it. Yeah, well, no, still, I find it entertaining. It's a great personal kind of hook. Yeah, Kefauver dies of a heart attack. Well, he dies a few days later. He's speaking on the floor of the Senate in 1963, has a heart attack.

He dies at the age of 60. My dad not upset. Great way to put that. Yeah, I like it. Yeah. So that's that's kind of what got us the comic book code. Now I have a little bit about the legacy, but I see in your notes that you really want. I want to get into that. So as well. So the legacy of the comic book code is is well frankly deserves its own episodes, but for starters It did something that you and I both came to appreciate as it rejuvenated superheroes. Yeah, they were languishing

They didn't exist really they they you know a little bit But like the explosion of superheroes happens as a result of the vacuum left by there shall be no horror or sex Yeah, and because superheroes were one of the only few acceptable there shall be no horror or sex. Yeah. And because superheroes were one of the only few acceptable formats, they always won. They always were on the side of justice and what have you from the 60s to the 70s. Things change in the 70s and we can get into that in other podcasts. Yeah, well, and in another podcast, specifically, I want to talk about Batman.

Oh, absolutely. Because it's after the code that we see, you know, the shift in focus in who his rose gallery was followed. Right. That's when we really start to see the beginnings of super villains. Because again, the restrictions of the CCA. Absolutely. Secondly, it makes storytelling really boring. Yes. Which means a lot of cloning between competing brands. It also kills off most of the other brands so you end up with just DC and Marvel and They have similarities that continue for like the next 40 years a plastic man and mr. Fantastic Thanos and dark seat

Moon Knight and Batman Deadpool and that other guy Braini dead shot you mean dead shot. I think so dead shot who came first. Yeah, I know I just want to point out Okay, I mentioned Brainiac and leader you have Yeah, it's leaders a deep cut Thirdly at anchors Marvel and DC is a too big fish in the pond and everyone else just kind of flared so right? Everybody else, which means... Spells comics with an axe on the end. You know, they can't compete financially.

Which is horrible for the artists because they basically just decide who to get dicked over by. Yeah, you know, like by leaving and coming back over and over. Now all of this eventually leads to comic book fans growing up. Yes. And the college. And developing their own comic formats. Alan Moore is directly responding to what he grew up and bemoaning. It gave creative

agitation to people who wanted to do more with the medium. It ultimately leads to graphic novels as a critically acceptable medium like at my school we actually teach a few graphic novels as as part of the curriculum there's an house mouse two there's uh uh what's it called it's uh polis i forget it's a percepteless percepteless thank you an amazing piece of it oh it's terrific terrific. Which ultimately separates it from comic books, which forces comic books to catch up. And by the time comic books catch up to graphic novels, graphic novels are not bound by the CCA and comic books in the early 2000s stop caring about the CCA as well. And now we live in a world without the CCA.

Yeah. So it's own legacy created, it's own destruction. Well, yeah, it did. I think as far as legacy goes, the biggest thing that struck me looking at this was that here we're talking about comic books. Here we're talking about, oh my god, we have to protect our children from this lurid sex violence, all this horrible stuff. And then, so that was in 54. In 1985. It's interesting. It's interesting that you mentioned Al Gore senior, because in 1985, the PMRC, which I've

written down here and I didn't write down what it stood for but it was the washington wives led by tipper gore wife of senator al gore june here uh... appeared before the senate commerce science and transportation committee in set timbre of nineteen eighty five commerce science and transfer commerce science and transportation and they they appeared before the committee uh... to argue for

regulation or or some kind kind of limitation being put on the music industry. They wanted... Parents Music Resource Center. Thank you. Yeah. They called for labeling, like the CCA tag, you wanted labels put on record albums that contained references to graphic sex, foul language, and all everything else.

Everything that the CCA had talked about, if music included it, they wanted it labeled. Which is a logical extension. It is. It's very much logical extension. And what I find interesting is the Cold War was still going on. It's 1985. The hysteria of the Cold War had gone away largely. And we were in that place where it's like, well, yes, we've just all grown up with the

understanding that we don't know. But you and I grew up in this era where, well, we have the safety of mutually assured destruction. The Russians love their children too. I love that that's safe. Well, yeah, but that was kind of, you know, the understanding was the Russians love their children too to quote Sting, paraphrase Sting, because we phrased it as a question. But it's like, they're not going to do anything in the world. We're not going to do anything in the world. As long as we're both capable of

ending the world, we're okay. Which like, you know, and any number of comedians and writers and poets and everybody has gone on about how mad that is, but that gave us a false discussion. Yeah, yeah, it gave us perhaps a false sense of security, but it gave us a sense of security. So there wasn't the hysteria about death from the sky at any moment. But do you know what the album was or the song was that motivated Tipper Gore to start this crusade?

I'm gonna say it was something by Frank Zappa. No. No. Zappa appeared was something by Frank Zappa. No. Zappa appeared before the committee. Famously. And D Snyder are the two best known, oh D Snyder showed up in full twisted sister Magalia with his sharpened teeth and his whole nine yards and he basically, I mean,

he did everything but throw the finger. Nice. And to Mrs. Gore, it was really, it's an amazing bit. So what was the other theater? Darling Nikki by Prince was the song off the album Purple Rain. Wow. Which absolutely ties into all kinds of racial shit. Yeah, doesn't it though.

And of course, one of the, you remember from the debate at the time, the two art forms, the two subgenres of the two art forms, the two subgenres of music that were terrifying people the most. And Darling Mickey doesn't really fall in either one of these, but the two that they, like, clamped down on were metal, which is, you know, very white, very, very white, you know, and it's, it's rock and roll from the 50s, A plus Ultra with all of the violence and all of the... Interestingly, of course, the bands covers that they've showed were Deaf Leopard and Wasp,

which like the Wasp cover, you look at the Wasp cover and you're like, okay, I can see why that might be kind of troubling. It's, you know, nearly naked, you know, woman, all that. And then the, the, uh, deaf leopard album was Pyramania. Oh wow. Which the, the artwork famously has, you know, a crosshairs and a, and a burning building in the background. Right. But the other art form, the thing, now Fox News uses that to look like running and everything. Yeah. Uh, and, and the other, the other art form that, that listed it all of this, you know, panic. I'm going to assume was rap. Yes. Yeah. Because you know, the other yeah. And, and, you know, the artists that got named one of the groups that was, you know, all over. Well, Rundy MC was, I think, probably the most widely known group,

but they weren't the ones that elicited the moral panic so much. It was two live crew. Oh, so we're talking 89, 88. Well, yeah, yeah, I mean, they came along later, but, but, you know, I remember. But that was, you know, the same moral panic when they were still talking about, oh my God god we got to label this stuff right you know and so there's this you know because you know erosmith came out I remember they got an

award and they said we would just like to thank tipper Gore because for every sticker she guarantees put on our albums is another million sold yep so there you go and and continuing that that going forward since the 1990s. And I'm spitballing with the date here. But since the 1990s, the other art form that has, you know, taken up the flag of being the villain in terms of what's corrupting our kids is video games. what's corrupting our kids is video games. Oh yeah, yeah. And so there's this never ending cycle of there's this new art form.

It's acceptable art. Yeah, it's acceptable art. People get panicked about it because it's being consumed by kids. Now, metal music, rap at the time, comic books in their day, and now video games, all have this association with youth culture. They all have this association with young people,

even though an awful lot of metalheads I know are all ageal congregating. Yeah, and young people getting together. When you're gaming, you're playing with other 12 year olds who also had sex with a mom. Yeah, well, all of them did. I mean, dude, you know. How do you get to play color grading?

Or Fortnite or whatever you know and so You know it's it's it's this thing that I think it's important for Those of us who spend time thinking To keep in mind That this is not this is all of this has happened before and all of this will happen again to paraphrase All of this has happened before and all of this will happen again. To paraphrase BS, actually quote BSG, but apply it in a different context. All of this has happened before and all of this will happen again. Like so much else in history, there's always going to be something that kids are into that

older folks are like, I don't understand this. This is disrupts order. It disrupts order. It disrupts order. It makes me uncomfortable. Therefore, it must be evil. Yeah you know, and that's just youth Yeah, I mean, you know, I I know I'm guilty of it talking about you know my my students

Having access to Snapchat and and social media during the day in school. I'm I'm of the opinion You know the phones need to stay at home or be locked up or something during the school day because It's a new it's order it's order and you know as much as I want to try to be open-minded about it. I'm I want him to get all off my lawn dammit and you know No, it makes sense. I mean I teach a dead language that I'm trying to bring back into the lexicon, not as a language, but like into academia. It used to be a regularly taught thing. Yeah.

And now it's not. And so I use all kinds of new ways, new disruptive ways, new ways that challenge the order to make it palatable to the kids. So, I'm on the other side of my tether ball ring, hitting the ball, a little extra, so that I have some say over how this new chaos, and I say chaos loosely, because it's just,

it's just order that I don't understand, but how this new chaos is gonna be played, so I'm trying to co-opt it for the good of the children. So dangerous for is that? Yeah. Well, that was depressing and bleak. So now that we've thoroughly depressed everybody with our, you know, ending of our discussion about the CCA, what do you have as a final takeaway? I really like the very last thing that you said there about how this has all happened before, it's all happening again.

I really like the link that you made connecting the different art forms. And honestly connecting that with what you and I have talked about regarding the need for order by the adults and the fear of the children and the chaos that they represent, just even on a micro level in our own households. Yeah. How about yourself? I think the biggest takeaway for me is looking at this kind of with fresh eyes and being reminded of like I said the cyclical nature of history and just the fact that this is a thing that has occurred before and that the forces that are behind it, the fact that we need to pay attention to the underlying psycho history of it all to get science fiction geeky about it.

And know what to be looking for, which is the curse of those of us who study history is to watch those who didn't study history repeating it over and over again. Or to have that same student back in your class next year. Yeah, I'm going. Yeah, I'm, yeah, my, my, Thank God for social promotion. Yeah, I was going to say my, my district, that is social promotion. I don't ever have to deal with that. I'm torn about how I feel on that point.

Sure. So, all right, so we've finished our first discussion. Damian, what, what do we've finished our first discussion. Damien, what do we got coming up next? Ed, do you like Star Trek? I am more a Star Wars guy. I'm gonna trek guy, I have a lot of friends who are really passionate trekkers. I think that's the proper term.

That's, yeah, that's the first. Yeah, I have a number of friends who are very passionate. And I have always been kind of trek adjacent. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, if you're a geek, you kind of have to be. I've watched every Star Trek episode there is.

I've watched. Wow. I think every movie there is up until the last one or two. I'm also much more Star Wars guy. To be fair, I'd rather live in a Star Trek universe than a Star Wars universe because they have things like healthcare. But I having watched all the Star Trek episodes that there are, there's one series that really stuck in my crop. It was called Star Trek Enterprise. Actually, it wasn't even called Star Trek Enterprise. It was just called Enterprise. And it came about

called Star Trek Enterprise, it's just called Enterprise. And it came about right on the heels of Voyager. And I want to take a look at where it fits into our cultural milieu because it also came about two weeks after 9-11 happened. Okay, so we're going to take a look at how 9-11 didn't just ruin things for what do we call those civil liberties, but also for Star Trek. So next podcast will be an exploration of space and our inability to imagine things in a post-9-11 world. All right. All right, stay tuned folks. Sounds really bleak and depressing. So it'll fit right in. Right. Yeah. All right. See you soon. in. Right. Yeah. Alright. See you soon.