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I haven't read any Ayn Rand, been thinking I should try one to find out what all the fuss is about. But in the other cases the political statement is the point, and the lack of subtlety was, I believe, a deliberate choice on the part of the author. On both this version of the thread and the previous, I think this may be the secret to getting away with it: you can if you do it deliberately, you may not if you do it accidentally.
Also, in more recent times writers and/or publishers seem to believe that audiences are more sophisticated, and so political and societal statements are best made in very subtle allusions rather than directly. Anything as blatant as was done previously is considered crass an uninteresting. From which stems the not uncommon feeling that "literature" can be obscure. Of course blatant statements do still appear, but these are "hidden" inside the drama of political and legal thrillers, and also in the fantasies of modern YA novels. But because the apparent purpose of these novels is to thrill the audience, few bother with the deconstructions that might expose real (and sometimes imagined) political and societal statements. In some respects that makes these all the more insidious (even if it was not always deliberate), when done well the reader just goes along with the assumptions presented by the writer.
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