With the 2024 election upon us, I am happily reminded of the 1964 Monocle magazine, Vol. 6, No. 3, devoted to skewering 1964 presidential hopeful Barry Goldwater, who was portrayed as an unhinged, ultra-hawk for promising to use nuclear weapons against America’s Cold War enemies (if necessary). Talk about nightmare rhetoric.
Long before the launch of the currently published international lifestyle/culture magazine Monocle (founded in 2007 and still going strong), the original Monocle was wittily anti-mainstream. In fact, although I was not Monocle‘s target audience, this issue inspired me as a 14-year-old graduate of MAD magazine and shaped the way I thought of—and hoped to someday, some way practice—satiric, anti-establishment commentary.
The original Monocle was published from 1956 (as stapled pamphlet and assorted newsletters) through to 1965 (as a bound magazine) edited by the late, great Victor Navasky, editor emeritus of The Nation. The original Monocle, headquartered at 80 Fifth Avenue in New York (where I shared an office in 1969), was one of the smartest of the sixties alternative periodicals. Yet compared to the leading “new left” monthlies of the day, Evergreen and Ramparts, Monocle was more focused on lampoon and parody. “We could challenge the pieties of the day through satire,” Navasky once told me in an interview, “which didn’t really exist in print in a serious way at that point.”
As a student at Yale during the tail end of the Joe McCarthy era, Navasky started Monocle, which arguably influenced another great mag of the times, The Realist, a journal of free thought, criticism and satire that Paul Krassner published between 1958 and 2001.
Although it couldn’t be predicted, many careers were made and styles launched at Navasky’s Monocle. The list of contributing illustrators is a who’s-who of political acerbity: Robert Grossman created the first African-American superhero, “Captain Melanin,” and “Roger Ruthless of the C.I.A.,” while Ed Sorel, David Levine, Paul Davis, Randy Enos, R.O. Blechman, 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 poked gaping holes in the body politic and sanctimonious pols on both sides of the aisles.
Monocle covered the 1960 election match between John F. Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon in its own contrarian way. For reasons too convoluted to explain here, Monocle‘s editors issued a pox on both their houses. Instead Monocle vigorously campaigned for Marvin H. Kitman, a newspaper columnist and political humorist, who was a chief contributor. It was never exactly clear what side Kitman was on — right? Left? Libertarian? Or just an old fashioned independent thinker?” He lost but not for lack of trying. (I’m told most of the staff voted for JFK anyway.)
When time came to endorse a candidate in 1964 Monocle reluctantly picked LBJ as the least onerous choice (and as it turned out he accomplished important progressive civil rights legislation). This Vol 6 No. 3 revealed their collective skepticism of LBJ. But utter contempt for Barry Goldwater.
At Monocle we [thought] that the ideal magazine should be like the UN police force and come out whenever there’s an emergency, or come out when we had something to say,” explained Navasky about its irregular (when they got around to it) schedule and regularly skeptical stance.
Monocle’s humor is the seed the grew into late Sixties fake news and lampoon. Monocle was the pioneer of stinging political tricksterism, which, to echo the voice that I hear in my head, is more essential for our collective mental health than any time before.
BTW: Check out the Monocle masthead below; some of you may recognize some interesting names.
Illustration: Edward Sorel
Cartoon: Edward Koren
Illustration: Edward Sorel
Cartoon: Lou Myers
Illustration: Robert Grossman
Illustration: Randall Enos
Illustration: Milton Glaser
Cartoon: R.O. Blechman