Years ago, when I was a tot working at my first job in publishing, an older editor told me about MAD Magazine's means of dealing with the election of 1960. The battle between Kennedy and Nixon was too close to call. When this gentleman, who was a kid himself in 1960, saw that MAD was the only magazine that called the election for Kennedy, he was amazed. He knew magazines didn't come out like newspapers, on a daily schedule; they went to press weeks earlier. How did they know Kennedy would win?
What they'd done, of course, was run their cover-dated January '61 edition (on newsstands right after the election) with different front and back covers, so the newsies could display whichever side was appropriate to who won.
Genius.
That was back when MAD was able to poke fun at everything, not just conservatives, although naturally a gadfly humor outfit would have been particularly sharp in targeting the mores of the day, so it would by nature go after the squares.
Well, nowadays no one is square, or everyone is square, or something, so all MAD could do was go after Trump like everybody else. I haven't looked at an issue in years, but I guarantee they never went after the Wokesters, the worst humorless scolds of the modern day, or else we would have heard about it. The Times would have run an article about how "problematic" MAD had become. And it might have saved the magazine by keeping it relevant.
But no, so no surprise that it shut down last year, at least as a regular print magazine. The classroom clowns have turned into the real squares, the real bluenoses. What can you expect after a sixty-seven year run? Rolling Stone is a dull establishment piece of crap now. As humorist Anne Beatts said, “You can only be avant-garde for so long before you become garde."
Anyway, 1960 was a whole different world, and I'm hoping that in 2021 we'll be headed somewhere nicer than we are in 2020, but I don't see today's election making that happen. Time to pray for the United States, and that "that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."
VitaminFred congratulates Abraham Lincoln upon his election as president. We were with you all the way, Abe!
Seven-year old me had that very issue of Mad.
ReplyDeleteAlfred wearing an "I Like Dick" button could be seen as answering a suspicion that many Mad readers fostered over the years.
My cousins weren't allowed to read Mad, nor watch "The Three Stooges", because their father considered them (the magazine and tv show) vulgar. I always found that ironic, since my cousin Dick (actual name) was the spittin' image of Alfred E. Newman, complete with the freckles and jumbo ears. He (my cousin) actually had his ears surgically taken in when he 10 or 11.
I take comfort in the fact that the arc of history has ground inexorably toward more freedom and dignity for all humanity. It has come at a steep cost from time to time, but I'd trade a summer of Antifa tantrums for an actual civil war any day.
Sorry to hear that about Mad Magazine.
ReplyDeleteCongratulations, Rutherford B. Hayes, we were with you all the way!
rbj
PLW: I noted the "I Like Dick" button, as did the Grand Comics Database, but I thought it too vulgar to mention in my blog. That what Comments are for!
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