BACK IN 1970...

I remember seeing an ad on prime-time TV for some product and at the time I was struck by the artwork. It was recognizably psychedelic and I thought that corporate America had pretty quickly adapted to the tastes of the hippies. Thomas Frank writes that this both an indictment of the superficiality of the 60s and a source of the anger of the teabaggers:

When commercial culture started to work by laughing constantly at the squareness of Middle America, it brought lots of Middle Americans to a state of simmering rage. They have remained there ever since, a "silent majority" that has rebelled more or less constantly since the late '60s, although not in a way that will ever convince the makers of commercial culture to stop disrespecting their values.

The corporate system is also flexible enough to take advantage of that anger, so today we have Fats Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, Mark Levin and FAUX News.