Defenders of the Faith

This time around I’m honoring three of my art heroes, men who stood up for freedom of speech and the First Amendment when it was under attack from own government. Shocking, I know.

First up is one of my main art heroes, Irving Klaw, aka “the Pin-up King.” Klaw was a pioneer in the world of fetish art and photography, perhaps best known today for his role in helping establish Bettie Page as an icon. (A fairly reliable rule of thumb is: if Bettie is in a bikini, Bunny Yeager took the picture; if Bettie is tied up and/or being spanked in lingerie, it’s a Klaw image.) Irving ran a highly successful mail-order business that specialized in cheesecake and BDSM imagery, commissioning models like Lili St. Cyr, Tempest Storm, and Blaze Starr, and sponsoring groundbreaking artists like Eric Stanton and Gene Bilbrew.

By 1957, at the height of McCarthyism, Klaw’s phone was tapped and his mail was being regularly intercepted by the FBI. The Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency branded Klaw a “degenerate pornographer” and ushered in a new era of media censorship. Bettie was also summoned to the hearings but was never called to testify. She retired from modeling soon afterwards. Because of the intense political, social, and legal persecution he faced, Klaw closed his business and burned an estimated 80% of his negatives.

Next up is William Gaines, the publisher and co-editor of EC Comics. EC published a line of titles that would become some of the most artistically influential comics of the 20th Century, including Tales from the Crypt, Weird Science, Shock SuspenStories, and The Vault of Horror, featuring stories and art by legends like Wally Wood, Al Williamson, and Jack Davis. (And, unlike the Big Two at the time, EC actually credited them.) The book Seduction of the Innocent by Frederic Wertham was published in 1954 and used misleading, manipulated, and sometimes outright fabricated evidence to scare the shit out of parents and preachers, and brand comic books as harmful and corrupting.

Bill Gaines soon found himself testifying before the same Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile that would target Irving Klaw. By 1956, EC Comics was forced to cease publication of all its titles except Mad Magazine.

Three decades before Snider, Zappa, and Denver took on the PMRC, Irving Klaw and Bill Gaines went to Capitol Hill to stand up against the three-headed monster of authoritarianism, Puritanism, and censorship while others were all too eager to be conformist lapdogs. True champions of artistic freedom, their impact and influence reverberates to this very day. In the meantime, McCarthyism and the coward whose name it bears have become nothing more than bywords for fear and intolerance.

Last but not least is Dee Snider. Dee, of course, was the frontman for legendary metal band Twisted Sister. In 1985, their song “We’re Not Gonna Take It” was targeted by the Parents Music Resource Center’s “Filthy Fifteen,” a list of songs they considered to be lyrically objectionable. Some of the other songs that offended Tipper Gore and the other politician’s wives who founded the PMRC were: “Darling Nikki” by Prince, “She Bop” by Cyndi Lauper, and “Dress You Up” by Madonna.

Within months of the PMRC’s formation, nineteen record companies who were members of the RIAA bowed to the pressure and agreed to slap the now-infamous “Parental Advisory” stickers on releases deemed explicit. Of course, as with anything grownups say you can’t have, the stickers had a forbidden-fruit effect and the offending records saw jumps in sales.

Gold and platinum aside, on September 19, 1985, Dee Snider, Frank Zappa, and John Denver (yes, John “Sunshine on My Shoulders” Denver) went to Washington, D.C. to educate a Senate committee about the ills of censorship. Denver, whom many expected to side with the PMRC before the hearing started, said he was “strongly opposed to censorship of any kind in society.” Dee would testify, “The full responsibility for defending my children falls on the shoulders of my wife and I, because there is no one else capable of making these judgments for us.”

Dee Snider and Twisted Sister remain giants of the genre to this day, inducted into the Metal Hall of Fame in 2023 and embarking on a tour later this year with Sebastian Back on lead vocals. Tipper faded into obscurity after her run as Second Lady. By the early 1990s, the PMRC was irrelevant, remembered today primarily for the stickers that helped kids like me decided which records would freak out their parents the most. Thanks, Tipper!