The Real Meaning of Soviet Agitprop in Jay Carney's Kitchen

As soon as the photograph of Soviet propaganda posters in Jay Carney’s kitchen hit the Internet, right-wing pundits began to draw conclusions about White House Press Secretary’s ideology, morals, and political leanings. It was as if things that a man merely places on his walls and looks at day after day can be any indication of his life choices.

If that were so, the meals in Carney’s kitchen would also probably match the menu of the place and time of the posters. His family would be living on a diet of beets, gruel, occasional rat, and thinly sliced boiled jackboots, which is what many Soviets ate at the time these posters were produced.

One poster was made in 1918, calling men to join the Red Army in the civil war against the anti-communist opposition, while the country lay in ruins due to the economic mismanagement as much as due to  intense fighting. The other poster was made during WWII, calling women to replace men at the factories, as the country lay in ruins, once again, due to intense fighting as much as due to the economic mismanagement.

The diet of the Carney family, however, does not include any of the food that the impoverished and starving Soviet people ate during the above wars. They eat more like the members of the Soviet Politburo and even better than that. They feast on fresh organic produce, succulent meat, delicious seafood, and tropical fruit delivered to the United States from all over the world. And as they enjoy the abundance of the American way of life in their kitchen, the Carneys like to stare at the two propaganda posters made for starving people. It never fails to improve their feeling of self-worth and digestion.

It is beyond imagination that anyone could misconstrue the Soviet agitprop in Jay Carney’s kitchen as an indication that White House Press Secretary Jay Carney and his wife somehow share the same ideas as the perpetrators of a brutal regime that starved its own citizens while the political elites lived in luxury, abused power, prosecuted the opposition, and ruled the country by means of executive orders.

Next, they would claim that that a neat stack of Chairman Mao’s Little Red Books in Valery Jarrett’s bathroom is not there merely to serve as an elegant accent to complement the shower curtains;  or that the Black Panther Party insignia on Michelle Obama’s pajamas isn’t merely a bold decorative pattern; or that the black flag of holy Jihad in Huma Abedin’s bedroom is somehow indicative of her sympathies towards the Muslim Brotherhood.

Following such flawed right-wing logic, one might even speculate that Saul Alinsky’s books on Hillary Clinton’s living room mean anything other than an effort to disguise an obscure dried spot that had mysteriously appeared on the coffee table in the last year of her husband’s presidency.

We invite our readers to take virtual tours of America’s other prominent political and cultural leaders and see what potentially “compromising” items they may have in their houses, so that we can pre-emptively debunk any accusations and witch hunts, such as the one to which the unfortunate White House Press Secretary is exposed today.