364 ChaPter^7
did “name names” and when he was given an honorary Oscar in 1999 many
in the crowd refused to stand for him and others even booed, so strong still
were their emotions about the McCarthy era in Hollywood. Like entertainers,
professors and teachers came under attack too. Although universities are alleg-
edly institutions where “academic freedom” is practiced, the sad fact was that
professors who even mildly criticized the U.S. were at risk of being repri-
manded or even fired and the university administrations, instead of defending
free speech, cooperated with the McCarthyite repression of its teachers. Just
as seriously, the zealous Wisconsin senator also went after J. Robert
Oppenheimer, a famous physicist and a “father” of the atomic bomb. Because
Oppenheimer, when he was young, had friends on the political left, the gov-
ernment withdrew his security clearance and terribly stained his reputation
and strained his health.Prosperity, Consumerism, Conformity, and Culture
Marge Simpson accidentally washed Homer’s white shirt with Bart’s red base-
ball cap, causing the shirt to turn pink. Running late for work, as always, and
without another shirt to put on, Homer wore the pink one. As he walked into
the Springfield Nuclear Power Plan with all the other workers, Mr. Burns and
Smithers, peering from a hidden camera, spotted the man in the pink shirt,
called him a “free-thinking anarchist,” and pulled him out and then committed
him to a mental health institution [where his roommate was “Michael
Jackson”]. As always, The Simpsons was combining humor with satire, and the
idea that Homer could get in trouble for wearing a different shirt was not as
bizarre as it might seem. In fact, Homer’s fate was a spoof on the conformity
of corporate life, and that was never more evident than in the 1950s, a time
of “pecking orders” and men in “Grey Flannel Suits.”
To be different in that era was somehow wrong, and if one wanted to get
ahead, especially on the job, his best bet was to not stand out, to simply fit
into the mass without calling attention to himself [and we can use masculine
terms here safely since virtually no women were employed at a high level in
the corporate world]. Many more jobs in corporate America were available
after World War II because of direct government involvement in the economy.
Government spending rose to $180 billion, or 17 percent of the GNP, where
it had been just 1 percent at the beginning of the Great Depression. Over half