CT Blue

It’s almost enough to make you swear and curse.

All things must pass, but that doesn’t mean we have to like it.

Grieve with me then, for the passing of MAD Magazine, which is about to publish its last monthly issue.

I grew up with MAD, and I owe the gang of idiots a debt of gratitude for helping to steer me in the right direction, politically. For a subtext of all that satire was a distinctly liberal world view. I remember, as a ten year old, wondering why they seemed to love to make fun of Richard Nixon all the time, even after he lost the presidential race in 1960. Sure, I was a Kennedy fan, since I came from a Democratic family, and besides he was a Catholic, and at that point in my life I was still holding fast to Pascal’s wager. But back then there were good people who were also Republicans. I know that’s hard to believe, but it’s true. I was too young to remember the Checkers speech, or the red-baiting, but thanks, in part, to MAD, by the time 1968 rolled around, and we were faced with the prospect of a Nixon presidency, I knew that he represented an existential threat to our republic. Obviously, many of my non-MAD reading contemporaries did not. Sure they made fun of JFK too, but not in the barbed fashion in which they went after Nixon and his ilk.

It wasn’t just Nixon, of course, Beneath all the satire was an underlying philosophy of tolerance and mutual acceptance. Everyone was equally absurd. They made fun of everyone, but they hated no one, except people like Nixon, of course. After all, neither the White Spy nor the Black Spy was the good guy. They were both idiots. My guess is that their target demographic was males between 10 and 14, and my guess too is that I’m not the only one whose left wing leanings were reinforced by MAD. I subscribed to the magazine for years, and I think I was better for it.

I’m not fourteen anymore, of course, but, believe it or not, I’m currently a subscriber to the electronic edition. Two years ago I saw a print copy at the Northshire Bookstore in Manchester, Vermont. There on the cover was Alfred E. Newman making fun of Donald Trump, and I decided that the gang of idiots had to be supported if they continued to proselytize for a liberal point of view. Of course, satirizing Trump was difficult for them, since he does it himself so skillfully, and I will confess that I haven’t read it too often, because, as I said, I’m not fourteen anymore, but it’s important that present day fourteen year olds have all the advantages I had at that age.

Alas, MAD will be no more. The world has lost a force for good.

CAVEAT: My statement that MAD’s target audience was males between 10 and 14 was by no means intended to denigrate those of the female gender. One of life’s mysteries, at least as I have observed life, is the inability of people with two X chromosomes to appreciate fine humor such as that delivered by the Three Stooges and even, incredible as this may seem, Monty Python. I don’t know why women don’t appreciate the humor when Moe bonks Curly or Larry (or both) over the head, but they don’t. I suspect that this genetic deficiency extends to appreciation for the work of the gang of (all male) idiots at MAD. But look at it this way. Imagine how much worse off all of us would be if those idiots hadn’t helped deflect at least some white males away from Trumpism (I’m assuming here that black male MAD readers didn’t need that particular push).