More Spooky Junk

Although I have many happy, warm memories of growing up in the Midwest, a number of them are more than a little spooky. A good example is this little item I cam across today in the ongoing junk sort. Long before there was a Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter or countless other screaming wackos on the airwaves, there was Gaylord Publishing which wielded (and still does today) much power over the media in the big U.S. center.

Besides being notorious for being incredibly stingy on their investment in actually covering the news, they have a long history of completely over the top editorials and commentary. A case in point is this cartoon from the late 1960s by staff "artist" Jim Lange. It shows the dreaded government fat cat asking for paltry support of the war machine while investing in inequitable amount in the Great Society programs of JFK and LBJ. In other words, why help educate, house, feed and bolster minority communities when we can ship them to be slaughtered in Vietnam? Does this sound eerily similar to modern Republican sentiment? The work was a gift to my father from a friend who was an advertising sales rep for Gaylord Publishing. When he brought it home, my mother was repulsed and told him to get rid of it. Obviously it got stuck in the back corner of a closet four decades ago. Needless to say, historical value or not, it's not going into the keep pile this time.