May 26th, 2011
Talkin’ John Birch Paranoid Blues
Red Stripes in the American Flag
The years following the Second World War in the United States were prosperous and idyllic in many ways. The superpower’s economy was booming, consumerism was at its height and, at least at first, it seemed that a new era of world peace would be ushered in following so many years of conflict and hardship. However, as the fifties wore on, dark clouds of fear and imminent war began to cast a shadow on America’s optimism and uncontested superiority. Idealism and optimism began to give way to fear and worry; Communism was demonized, as was anyone who sympathized with Communists. Americans learned to detest and fear the “Commies” from a young age, helped along by the likes of Senator Mccarthy and Robert Welch (the founder of the John Birch Society). In the late fifties, a counterculture movement started to appear and challenge what it perceived as narrow-minded prejudice on the part of the established political Right. The movement voiced its opinion through protests, and perhaps most importantly and effectively, through music. Bob Dylan’s Talkin’ John Birch Paranoid Blues satirized the strong sense of fear and suspicion that the post-WW2 era and the John Birch Society brought to the United States; Dylan’s effective use of irony and obvious lyrical absurdity, in addition to the already sarcastic and mocking tone of the song highlighted the counterculture point of view that many Americans held on the issue of communism—that it’s threat was over-exaggerated by the Right. The censoring of Dylan’s criticism showed the significant degree to which the John Birch Society and Communist scare in general affected public opinion and thought in the 1960s, while the media’s response raised questions about whether or not it was appropriate to allow fear to censor the thoughts and ideas of individuals.
Robert Welch, a wealthy businessman from Massachusetts, founded the John Birch Society in 1958 as a means of preserving what he believed to be the fundamental American values, by advocating for “Less government, more responsibility, and—with God’s help—a better world”. The society takes its name from Captain John Birch, a U.S. Intelligence officer killed by the communist Chinese after the conclusion of World War II. John Welch referred to Birch as the “first casualty of World War III”. In the 1950s and 1960s, “Birchers”, as members came to be known, “exposed” and accused countless individuals of Communist sympathy, often with no damning evidence whatsoever. Some examples of notable figures that were accused of Communist ties by the John Birch Society are: Martin Luther King Jr. President Dwight D. Eisenhower, and J. Robert Oppenheimer—a peaceful protestor, a president, and the man who, in essence, gave the United States their most powerful and terrible weapon (the atomic bomb). However, as this accusatory and fearful organization gained momentum, so too did its opposition.
Bob Dylan, born in Minnesota as Robert Zimmerman, began what would become the most prolific musical career of his generation in a remarkably humble manner-- by composing music for the folk journal Broadside. His first published piece was “Talkin’ John Birch Paranoid Blues”—a sarcastic, critical commentary on the anti-communist sentiment that the society supported. His lyrics explored the depraved nature in which the society instilled fear and suspicion in its members, all the while staying true to the talking blues style of his idol, folk legend Woodie Guthrie. In the song, Dylan satirically portrays himself as a member of the society, determined to find evidence of Communism in every day American life. One line that captures particularly well the panic and fear that many Birchers felt during the period is, “Then I changed my name to Sherlock Holmes…and discovered they wus red stripes on the American flag”. The red scare of the 1950s was so profound that some Americans questioned everything that they could conceivably link to Communism in any way. The Stars and Stripes of the American flag are practically the essence of America—the notion that there would be anything Communist or anti-American about them is absurd. With this line Dylan clearly puts into perspective the actions of the John Birch Society and questions the legitimacy of their beliefs and accusations. Later on in the song, Dylan reflects his displeasure with censorship when he tells of how he “investigated all the books in the library, ninety percent of ‘em gotta be burned away”. Dylan again makes effective use of sarcasm to present his point of view, here by portraying himself as a radical Bircher concerned with the existence of inappropriately pro-Communist literary works. The ultimate irony was yet to come when he wrote this song, appearing when he tried to perform on national TV and came face to face with the ugly truth of censorship.
Dylan arrived on the set of the Ed Sullivan Show on the night of May 12th, 1963, ready to play Talkin’ John Birch Paranoid Blues for a national audience on primetime TV; just days before, the Chad Mitchell Trio had also sung a song ridiculing the John Birch Society on ABC. With the spotlight of national media on the Society, and the general public watching and waiting to be persuaded what to believe, it was yet to be determined whether or not the organization would emerge from the proceedings unscathed. Dylan had warmed up and was preparing to go on the air when Stowe Phelps, the editor of program practices for CBS-TV informed him that he would be unable to perform his song due to its controversial nature, and that he would have to choose another piece. One of the lines of the song that CBS viewed as particularly troubling was, “Now we all agree with Hitler’s views, although he killed six million Jews. It doesn’t matter that he was a Fascist, at least you can’t say he was a Communist”. Dylan suggested that the Right was so concerned with being anti-Communist that they were in fact leaning in the other political direction to such an extent that they were approaching sympathy with Fascism. CBS was worried that the John Birch Society would seek legal action against them for slander and libel. According to the show’s producer, Bob Precht, when the CBS censor broke the news to Dylan, the young musician replied, “this is what I want to do. If I can’t play my song, I’d rather not appear on the show”. Instead of agreeing to play another, less inflammatory number, Dylan chose to walk off the show in protest. Whether Dylan knew it at the time or not, his decision to walk off the Ed Sullivan show was one of the pivotal moments of his career. In the following weeks, media coverage of the incident would serve both to advance Dylan’s personal musical career and to question the morality of the censorship of culture in America.
The media seized on the issue, ensuring that everyone who read the newspapers knew that CBS had censored the work of a young folk singer speaking out in protest against the John Birch Society. The New York Times ran a story on May 14th, with a headline reading: “Satire on Birch Society Barred From Ed Sullivan’s TV Show”. The article gave a rather factual retelling of the incident, but the story speaks for itself. When asked about the situation, a C.B.S. spokesman replied, “We have no comment”. However while the corporation as a whole may have had nothing to say, Ed Sullivan himself was very open with the media about the matter. In an interview that he gave with the New York Post, he claimed to have supported Dylan on the censorship issue. He claims to have told CBS, “It’s your network, but we want to state that the decision is wrong and the policy behind it is wrong”. In the aftermath of the censorship, Ed Sullivan wanted to make sure that his reputation as an independent, unbiased and open talk-show host remained intact.
The censorship of Talkin’ John Birch Paranoid Blues serves as an effective allegory for the period as a whole; it was not only the fear of communism, but also a fear of those afraid of communism themselves that led to a national atmosphere of mistrust and suspicion. The 1950’s had been dominated by the witch-hunt that was McCarthyism. The public saw McCarthy go after the seemingly sacrosanct institution that was the U.S. Army; it saw how citizens’ lives were destroyed by false accusations and empty suspicions; however, the worst aspect of the period was that most of the population was too afraid to speak out in protest. In a poll taken in 1954 by the Los Angeles Mirror of high school teachers in Los Angeles, the results concluded that:
“More than half the political science and history teachers in Los Angeles high schools who answered a Mirror poll are “afraid to teach” because of current uproars over controversial subjects”.
Teachers were afraid of conducting free discourse in their classrooms; if they took too liberal a point of view, they risked being branded as communists. This is the type of fear and immoral censorship of ideas (however indirectly) that Dylan protested when he walked off the Ed Sullivan Show, years later. In 1963, although the McCarthy era had passed, Communism was still a very controversial topic. It the work of took progressives like Dylan to begin to wear away at the walls of the decades-old bastion of fear and hatred and make way for free thought and the unhindered voicing of opinions.
While the John Birch Society and the Red Scare didn’t surrender outright and die in the face of Dylan’s music and the counterculture movement in general, American society as a whole did make great gains in the area of personal freedom of expression. Today, the idea of a musician being unable to play a song on TV because it is politically or socially controversial is nearly preposterous. We, as viewers, are presented with many different standpoints and opinions in the media, and are left to form our own opinions without being afraid of taking an unpopular stance. This freedom from censorship and intellectual repression is something that might not have existed today had it not been for the counterculture voices of the 1950’s and 60s, such as the gravelly drawl of Robert Zimmerman, the young folk singer from Minnesota who became the figurehead of the movement that would change the course of our great nation forever.
Works Cited
Val Adams, “Satire on Birch Society Barred from Ed Sullivan’s TV Show,” New York Times 14 May 1963: n. pag. ProQuest Historical Newspapers, 19 May 2011.
“Danger to Administration Program Hinted in McCarthy Red-Hunting Tactics,” Seattle Daily Times 18 Apr. 1954: 17, America’s Historical Newspapers, 24 May 2011.
Bob Dylan, Talkin’ John Birch Paranoid Blues, 1963 (New York: Knopf, 1992)
Nikki Giovanni, “John Birch Society,” The Sixties in America, Ed. Carl Singleton, Vol. 1 (Pasadena: Salem, 1999) 395-396.
Robert Shelton, No Direction Home (New York: Beech Tree Books, 1986)
Howard Sounes, Down the Highway (New York: Grove, 2001)
Bob Spitz, Dylan (New York: Norton, 1989)
“About the John Birch Society,” The John Birch Society, 2010, 24 May 2011,
