not a communist. The narrator believes Betsy Ross was a communist because she designed the American flag with red stripes and accuses U.S. Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower, Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson and "that Roosevelt guy" of being Russian spies. He also says that "To my knowledge there's just one man/ That's really a true American: George Lincoln Rockwell/ I know that he hates Commies cus he picketed the movie Exodus". After exhausting the possibilities of new places to find communists, the narrator begins to investigate himself. In Bob Dylan: Prophet, Mystic, Poet, Seth Rogovoy wonders why "picketing Exodus would indicate anti-Communist tendencies". Rogovoy theorizes that Dylan could be referencing the alleged association between Jews and communism or the fact that Exodus was scripted by Dalton Trumbo, one of the Hollywood Ten who were blacklisted for being communists. Rogovoy also notes that the song's reference to Exodus illustrates Dylan's love of that film; the singer would later introduce performances of "All Along the Watchtower" with a snippet of the "Theme from Exodus" by Ernest Gold. A writer for PBS interpreted the song as being about the importance of freedom of speech. David E. Kaufman says in Jewhooing the Sixties: American Celebrity and Jewish Identity that "Talkin' John Birch Society Blues" includes some of Dylan's few explicit references to his own Jewishness, though none of its lines are "exactly a ringing endorsement of his identity as a Jew." Critical reception Joe Lynch of Billboard said that while Dylan is "not exactly "Weird Al" Yankovic or Tom Lehrer, [he] has given us many wry, witty and hilariously outlandish lyrics over the years" and listed the song's line about Betsy Ross as one of the funniest in Dylan's discography. Amanda Petrusich of Pitchfork wrote that the "infamous" song exemplified that "Dylan's comedic timing was at its apex in '64, growling perfect punchlines ('I heard some footsteps by the front porch door/ So I grabbed my shotgun from the floor/ I snuck around the house with a huff and a hiss, saying hands up, you communist!/ It was the mailman/ He punched me out') every single time." PBS called the song a "prime example" of how "Dylan's early '60s songs often have a whimsical touch—a sort of audio camouflage for the radical content of the lyrics." The Houston Chronicle Chris Gray felt that "Talkin' John Birch Society Blues" prefigures later satirical songs like Green Day's