In The IndigNation, Fred Clark talks about “The National Indignation Convention” (!) an early 1960’s movement, similar to the shouting mobs showing up at public meetings on health care, but were convinced that the danger to America was fluoridated water instead of public insurance.

Unsurprisingly, the movement started in Dallas, which at the time was a hotbed of anti-Catholic sentiment in the wake of JFK’s election. Of course, there was another facet to the meanness:

The woman who assaulted Adlai Stevenson with the picket sign was affiliated with the National Indignation Convention. Photojournalist Wes Wise, who captured that incident on film, reveals another revealing detail in Robert Huffaker’s book, When the News Went Live: Dallas 1963. After the woman’s assault on Stevenson was condemned nationally, the crazy lady offered what she considered an excuse for her behavior. “I was pushed from behind by a Negro,” she said. There were, of course, no black people in the vicinity.

These Pearls Won’t Clutch Themselves is a funny dialog between someone who is scandalized by someone saying a politician is lying (in this case, Governor Palin, on the so-called ‘death panel’) and the person who pointed out the lie.

B: You realize what you’ve done, don’t you?

A: Drawn a link between the spreading of malicious falsehoods and the practice commonly referred to as “lying”?

B: Well, yes, that. That’s not allowed.