As the 2024 election approaches, I fondly recall 1964. Monocle Volume 6, Issue 3 of the magazine was a scathing critique of 1964 presidential candidate Barry Goldwater, portraying him as a crazed ultra-hawk who promised to use nuclear weapons (if necessary) against America's Cold War enemies — the kind of rhetoric made for a nightmare.
Long before the current crop of international lifestyle and culture magazines were published Monocle (Established in 2007 and still going strong) The original Monocle I was anti-mainstream. In fact, I MonocleFor me, the target reader of , this issue inspired me as a 14-year-old graduating senior. gone crazy This magazine really got me thinking about satirical and anti-establishment commentary and hoping to put it into practice in some form someday.
original Monocle It was published from 1956 to 1965 (as stapled pamphlets and various newsletters) and was edited by the late Victor Navasky (Editor Emeritus). The Nation. original MonocleBased at 80 Fifth Avenue in New York (where I shared an office in 1969), the magazine was one of the finest alternative periodicals of the sixties, but compared with the leading “New Left” monthlies of the time, evergreen and Ramparts, Monocle The emphasis was on satire and parody: “We were able to challenge the pieties of the time through satire,” Navasky once told me in an interview, “because serious printed satire didn't exist at the time.”
Navasky was a student at Yale University toward the end of the Joe McCarthy era. MonocleIt probably influenced another great magazine of the time, RealistA magazine of free thought, criticism, and satire published by Paul Krasner from 1958 to 2001.
Though it was hard to predict, many careers and styles were built in Navasky's stores. MonocleThe list of contributing illustrators is a who's who of political acerbity: Robert Grossman created the first African-American superheroes, Captain Melanin and Roger Ruthless of the CIA, while Ed Sorel, David Levine, Paul Davis, Randy Enos, R.O. Breckman, Bob Gill, Milton Glaser, James McMullan, Tomi Ungerer, Lou Myers, Seymour Chwast, Marshall Arisman, and John Alcorn contributed a variety of covers, cartoons, and illustrations that poke gaping holes in the political system and hypocritical politicians on both sides of the aisle.
Monocle He covered the 1960 election campaign between John F. Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon in a uniquely paradoxical way, for reasons too complicated to explain here. MonocleThe editors of spread the plague to both companies. Instead Monocle He was an enthusiastic supporter of newspaper columnist and political humorist Marvin H. Kitman, who was a major contributor. It was never clear which side Kitman was on: right or left, libertarian or old-fashioned independent thinker? He lost, but not for lack of trying. (I've heard most of his staff ended up voting for JFK.)
When it came time to endorse a candidate in 1964 Monocle Reluctantly, they chose LBJ as the least taxing option (and he did, after all, get important progressive civil rights legislation through).This Volume 6, Issue 3 makes clear their collective skepticism of LBJ, but also their utter disdain for Barry Goldwater.
in Monocle we [thought] “The ideal magazine would be like the United Nations police, published when there's an emergency or when there's something to say,” Navasky said, explaining the magazine's irregular schedule and perpetual skepticism.
Monocle's humor is the seed that grew into the fake news and satire of the late '60s. Monocle A harbinger of hard-hitting political maneuvering, and, echoing the voices I hear in my head, now more essential to our collective mental health than at any other time in history.
by the way, Monocle Below are the names of the companies. You may recognize some of the interesting names:
