unrest in many Western countries. Among many such events in the United States, police officers clashed violently with anti-Vietnam War demonstrators at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in August 1968. David A. Noebel, an American arch-conservative, paired the song with "Back in the U.S.S.R." when he accused the Beatles of being pro-Communist and leading a move towards revolutionary socialism with the White Album. Along with McCartney's "Rocky Raccoon", however, "Piggies" was also criticised by the radical New Left as an example of the Beatles resorting to whimsical parody instead of directly addressing contemporary issues. Among the more conservative elements of the British establishment and the public, the release of The Beatles coincided with a less tolerant attitude towards the band. On 19 October, two days after the 24-hour session to sequence the album, Lennon, along with Yoko Ono, was arrested for possession of cannabis; Lennon described the bust as a "set-up" by the London Drug Squad. During a radio interview shortly afterwards, in Los Angeles, Harrison questioned the local police department's motto "To serve and protect" when asked about the criminality of smoking marijuana. In mid November, he represented the Beatles on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, which was in conflict at the time with the CBS television network over its political satire and regularly subjected to censorship. Author John Winn describes Harrison's guest appearance as "an important show of support" following Richard Nixon's recent US election win. Writing in the International Times, Barry Miles found "Piggies" "unsubtle" and likely to appeal to "those involved with Chicago's pig-police". William Mann of The Times noted the recurring nature theme throughout the album, from brief mentions of monkeys, lizards, elephants and tigers, to song titles such as "Blackbird" and "Piggies", and asked of Harrison's characters: "are they Chicago police or just company directors?" Melody Makers Alan Walsh admired the instrumentation on the recording and deemed "Piggies" to be "The Beatles' satire track ... a kick at upper-class reactionaries or journalists (or both)". In his unfavourable review of the White Album, in The New York Times, Mike Jahn considered that many of the tracks were "either so corny or sung in such a way that it is hard to tell whether [the Beatles] are being serious", among which the words of Harrison's song served as "an act of lyrical overstatement". Record Mirror remarked that the birdsong effects of "Blackbird" were replaced by