As a 63yr.old, I have nothing but admiration and adoration for the staff, the magazine and the quick quips that remain with me. Nary a day goes by that my internal dialogue doesn't reference some part of MAD's escapes from the staid. As a child ( one of 5 siblings), Saturdays were spent going to and from dreary piano & theory lessons in St.Louis (pre-interstate and daylight savings time equaled a 2&1/2 hour ride, one way). Each of us usually had several hours in the city to "kill", wandering around the Woolworths and surrounding locale of Clayton, MO. MAD made the 2&1/2 hours home sandwiched inside the station wagon seem like my escape: the humour and wit between the pages, the cartoons & charactitures(sic?) hidden between the 'departments', and the political (sub)commentary relentlessly and endlessly amused me. I, too, read the issues from cover to cover, over and over..."Believe it or nuts", my heart mourns in its memory and mourns MAD's memorialized messages.
RIP, Alfred E. Neumann! May you live forever in our minds and memories!
We're nearly the same age and I, too, was a huge fan of Mad during it's hey-days years in the 60s. I especially loved the satirization of current TV shows but what made the magazine so delicious was that our parents hated it (albeit, let us read it, anyway) and it was considered to be subversive by adults. How could it not be successful? I haven't read it in decades but it is a fond memory of my youth.
I'm less than a decade behind you, but I share your appreciation. Just yesterday I was reminded of a joke from Mad that meant a lot to my entire family (I was the first, and most thorough, reader of each new issue, but everyone else sampled from it as well.) The appearance of a new issue at the grocery store was cause for celebration.
I'll miss Mad, it's what I read as a kid waiting to get my hair cut. If you knew how the magazine was produced you could sense this day was coming. They are legendary for having staff members with 30-50 year careers. For example the guy who does the fold-ins, (every one of them has been made by one guy - Al Jaffee) is 98 and has been with the magazine for 64 years. The young guys in the office are likely in their 60's. Combine that with the decline in print media in general and I don't see a reasonable way to continue production.
Al Jaffee also wrote all the “snappy answers to stupid questions” which is basically a bible for funny. If you havent had the chance to read them Id highly suggest it.
A bible for grinding a bit into the ground over decades. The book version of those had little blank templates so the reader could write his own "Snappy Answers". Why the hell not?
...I guess I'm a downer. Did you know Chevy Chase wrote gags for MAD? They had a lot of outside writers like that. Even Don Martin (whose cartoons seemed pretty straightforward, even if he was the "maddest") used writers for jokes.
MAD helped the world learn to laugh at itself, including comedic cynicism and sarcasm with top notch satire aimed at everyone including themselves at MAD.
MAD inspired all types of comedy from many greats today. Terry Gilliam called MAD's Harvey Kurtzman his mentor [1]. Judd Apatow says similar. It inspired Cracked, National Lampoon and many other comedy media. MAD was even partially responsible for the counter culture [2].
The re-launch I think wasn't truly the MAD spirit but I was hopeful for it continuing, always a subscriber. MAD didn't transition well after the internet, even though they were like a pre-internet must see destination. After 2000 they held under 250k subscribers [3].
I'll miss dearly new content from Alfred E. Neuman and the 'usual gang of idiots' for sure, but we'll always have MAD history.
MAD will forever have changed the world and comedy for the better. The world could use more MAD satire today so it is sad to see it go.
It seems to me that MAD was an older generation's magazine that didn't do a good job pivoting to a new audience.
Looking at the cover in the link, it already feels 30 years old. (The characteristic MAD face evokes old-timey Americana in a way that feels nostalgic more than current.)
Sometimes it’s just time. I’d rather a brand stay in lockstep with a generation and step aside as it generation does. This never ending desire for growth, “reimagining”, and immortality is not serving people well.
I was joking (to make a point about the elitism of the parent), but still, that's like your opinion, man.
He is still considered one of the biggest thinkers of philosophy in the 20th century, personal warts and all.
Plus, as a European, I wouldn't trust people with analytical/anglo-saxon philosophical tendencies to know philosophy when they see it (e.g. re D/G and Lacan).
It's bizarre how much Alfred looks like W Bush. Or vice versa. They both "evoke old-timey Americana". A wholesome, if slightly simple-minded, country boy.
My brother used to let me read Mad Magazine out loud to test my just learned reading skills when I was in 1st grade (circa 1963). One time, I pronounced a word as "eye-doyt". My brother knew that wasn't a word and had to look at the page. The word was actually "idiot".
Gothamist had some decent articles / videos on mad recently. Including one on Al Jafffee who did the folding back page. They’re short and pretty interesting.
I inherited my Dad's Mad magazines which covered the mid 60s to the early 70s, and my Uncle's, which covered the early 70s to the early 80s, and my collection, which began in 1984 and ran to 1993. I read them all over and over. I learned about the world through the spectre of Mad, it was my primary education.
Of course, it ain't what it used to be and hasn't been for a long time, so I guess I'm not that sad to see it go. It was a different era.
Same. It's not exaggerating to say that it taught me a healthy distrust of authority and corporate America. RIP, gang. You showed me a great many new ideas.
I inherited a pile of Mad magazines as a kid in South Africa. Some of the content was confusing to me as I had little concept of some US terms, i.e. I had no idea which season 'Fall' is, or that a character complains about the temperature being in the eighties (celcius vs fahrenheit).
Just yesterday I recalled an old joke in an old copy of Mad. It was a top ten list of songs that are about violence. One of the songs listed was Sting and the Police, "Don't stab so close to me". Still laughing about that now.
Speaking of Spy vs Spy, I have always wanted a modern game with the same mechanics as the Commodore 64 trilogy; players running around setting up comic traps against each other. Would make for some great couch multiplayer, especially on the Nintendo Switch!
I love mad magazine despite being born in the 1980s–I bought old copies from comic shops and the paperbacks were easy to find at used book stores. I even bought the cd-rom box-set with the entire archives at one point! My kids now read my old mad books and magazines.
That said, I think it's good that they're packing it in. All good things must end some day, and Mad Magazine has been past its prime for some time now. As other commenters suggest, the context in which Mad was revolutionary & cutting has long past & its style of irreverence is now almost ubiquitous.
But I can't say I won't miss the furshlugginer thing!
Sad. I’d love to get a complete collection of the German translation (which was as least as awesome as the american version). Anyone know whether this exists ? You could buy the entire US collection on CD for ≈$40 a while back (still can: https://www.amazon.com/Absolutely-MAD-Magazine-50-Years/dp/B...)
It’s too bad that they never transitioned into newer forms of media to capture their demographic as the internet took hold.
I remember them as a teen in the 90’s and they still had a captive audience in my peers and I. After the mobile computing revolution had taken hold I don’t think teens even were aware they existed.
NYT has done quite well for itself. And you have one of their former developers (Mike Bostock) for a number of the most popular web libraries over the past 8-10 years or so.
While I'm not sure why Mad will cease publishing exactly, I'm wondering what we can do to keep weird and edgy stuff afloat. Millenials and up are really missing out badly, and I'm blaming WWW economics as they have developed, along with the monopolistic sales channels and our reluctance to buy any online publication at all. Mad is even pretty mild/mainstream compared to the stuff we had in the 90s (in Germany at least). What option does an author/artist have today to make a buck with his works? Wasn't the WWW supposed to enable easy publishing for everybody?
When they relaunched a year or two ago I tried to find an issue to buy. I went to the local chain bookstore, a couple supermarkets, and Walmart and couldn't find it. I didn't know if that was because none of those places had ordered it or if it was already sold out.
Since then I have picked up a couple issues and found them to be pretty good. Sad to see them coming to an end.
> "When political humor seemed to work, MAD doubled down on lampooning the Trump administration, which earned some critical praise but likely alienated conservative readers as well as putting the magazine in direct competitions with late night shows that were delivering content nightly"
This is so sad to see. The fact that they took the easy road of Trump jokes, is far from the magazine I once knew. They used to have witty images and commentary that would appeal to many...
Its a different world. Comedy will belong to those who have the bravery to make fun of today's sacred cows not yesterday's.
Mad was built on parodying a Middle American mindset that largely doesn't exist anymore. Thanks in small part to counterculture such as it self. In a way its a victim of its own success. It tore down the enemy too well and the counterculture is 'the Man' now. You can see the same thing happening with the Simpsons. Its lost its purpose.
On another note, I'm not going to pretend that simply being left leaning doomed Mad but there are already a gajillion places simply making fun of Drumpf and Republicans. Gotta stand out somehow.
Not to veer wildly into politics, but the gajillion places making fun of the right seem to be much less effectual than in the past. The ubiquitousness of the conversation centering around them seems to be getting coopted as an advantage. It’s “no press is bad press” on cocaine and I’m really curious when the societal antibodies are going to kick in, if they exist. I’m trying to think of the punch that’s landed the hardest and actually caused damage, and I’m coming up short.
I’m not saying this as a partisan or political argument, but I’m genuinely curious about the sociological implications. It’s a very... strange puzzle to me, and I’d welcome some fresh perspectives.
It worked when the right relied on "seriousness" and "respectability". Mockery is the counter to seriousness. The targets of this used to be at the top of the power ladder; mocking them was a form of levelling.
The right has largely stopped trying to engage neutrals on any kind of intellectual, rational basis, and has instead gone for leaning heavily on the emotional buttons of fear and power. Especially power: the cruelty of family separation at the border is deliberate. The right tells you who to hate and encourages you to watch their humiliation, but picks targets by their vulnerability. Hence it has to lie about their power and big up children into "threats to national security".
The tank parade is yet another symbol of this, nicely timed for just after the 30th anniversary of Tianamen.
Setting aside arguments that could be considered more partisan...I think its partially mainstreaming. I'm sure an early Church father or Renaissance secularist were a bit more sophisticated in promulgating and defending their creed than your average Joe Schmoe door to door evangelist or random early 2000s poster to r/atheism. What was the domain of (still crazy imo) but select group of activists/academics is now to the point where people with actual diagnosed mental disorders are latching on to it in large numbers. (my personal favorite way of measuring whether something is mainstream) https://youtu.be/Gzdf4V7Cf_M
Also theres the new dynamic which has emerged within the past decade or 2 but has ramped up considerably where Progressives are the new establishment. They of course have dominated certain areas for a long time but its at the point now where every major sector of society (with a current trivial exception of a tenuous hold on a few offices in the federal government) is controlled by people who are fanatics for or at least bow to what would have been considered ridiculous political correctness/social justice only a few short years earlier. Parody walks hand in hand with fighting against something larger. So does self actualization. Hence the desperate attempts for people to convince themselves that Google/MS/Facebook/Amazon/CNN/HuffPo/NYT et al is 'The Resistance'.
Excuse me for a moment while I mourn for my youtube suggestions.
I think mainstreaming is an interesting point - a similar strain to what people are calling the "rise of populism" which ends up being more direct. In some ways its empowering the unwashed masses, and in others its being more genuine/less filtered.
I had another paragraph here that went into how progressives aren't the establishment economically by any means and was about to disagree, but after re-reading and scoping your argument to just having command of the social landscape I think you're probably correct. The lines of attack brought on by some in the social justice world can be patently ridiculous, and are ripe for parody. Its difficult to come around to being empathetic to that fact when most of my upbringing was during the culture wars against the "prudes", who had all the power and were using it to gatekeep everyone. I'm certainly more comfortable living in this social environment myself, but I remember the feelings of empowerment when we got to call out something in society that was obviously bullshit bullshit.
I suppose I have some fear around that as a natural backlash on some issues can turn into a general backlash against the entire thing - are we heading for another Disco Demolition? Or will a more middle ground maturing of language happen? One thing does seem almost certain - the corporations will make a lot of money any way the wind blows.
There have been a few attempts to start mass destruction of consumer products in response to companies getting involved in the culture war, such as Nike supporting the "take a knee" protests. The only reason nobody's done this with music is that it's dematerialised.
I wouldn’t take the act of destruction as being literal. However, if all of a sudden Nike’s became actually uncool and not just uncool with the alt-right then that would be a Disco Demolition.
> I’m trying to think of the punch that’s landed the hardest and actually caused damage, and I’m coming up short.
SNL's Palin parodies? Not sure whether that actually mattered or the Republicans just, for unrelated reasons, failed to GOTV. I'm pretty sure most self-identified Republicans still think she's great and weren't turned away from the polls over her, but maybe it swayed some moderate/no-party-affiliation folks?
Beyond that, humor's kinda a sustaining force for the left, in the same way... whatever you'd call Talk Radio style entertainment-news is for the right (AM radio, various web shows and podcasts, Fox News). Its efficacy may be more in group cohesion than converting "others".
[EDIT] incidentally, SNL probably played a large part in painting the (fairly negative) pop-culture image of Hillary that was such an important part of the 2016 election, overshadowing the whole race. Think mid- to late-Clinton-presidency SNL. So there's that.
Those are good examples - I'm trying to think about the current era though. Interesting that you bring up Hillary being mocked actually - perhaps it was a turning point in suddenly the Dems were more mockable, or at least mockery stuck to them.
With the republicans now, I think they've positioned themselves to be immune from mockery - they saw how effective Jon Stewart was during the Bush years, and the solution now seems to be to fill the air with as much as possible so that it all turns to static.
I remember when Trump got elected, the biggest question everyone had as a comedian was "how do you mock this person, he's already too ridiculous"? Ditto Boris Johnson happening now. Some are trying to start countering this from trying to draw a line by defining values (that they clearly don't seem to share) - the Pete Buttigieg strategy, the Joe Biden strategy. It just seems like a fascinating turn of events that suddenly mockery as a political tool can be nullified.
Nothing SNL has ever done on Trump has ever seemed to dent him. Sean Spicer though - that definitely got through. And now he's gone, replaced by Sarah Sanders who manages to soak up all sorts of sympathy despite lying all the time. I guess the other poster is right - the progressives really have become the social establishment, and that comes with a lot of really interesting concequences.
I remember when it was the AM radio folks mocking Trump. And, you know, everyone else. Ah, the 90s, when regarding Trump as the textbook definition of a philandering flim-flam artist, worthy of little to no respect whatsoever and certainly no trust, crossed party lines. What a ride this has been.
I think that's the easy answer but I think it may not be the whole story. Fox news, conservative radio, etc have existed for a while. Bubbles have also always existed, and yes they've gotten bigger - but at the same time, there's been a big social shift that's happened at the same time this has been going on. The Obama era marked a change to progressives being the social establishment (not to be confused with economic establishment). Suddenly the previous mockers are now the cheerleaders, and corporate america dives right in with them on the equality/diversity train.
Then Trump comes in, and somehow wins with a secret weapon - if he acts like a crazy person all the time, the mocking will get so loud, AND be so ubiquitous it'll just turn to static in everyone's minds. Suddenly the biggest political weapon the left has to win over independents isn't very useful.
I'm not concerned with the "base" of both parties - Trump hasn't dropped below 40% in a while, partly out of polarization, but also partly that there is a base he has, and that base is opposition to the left, who soundly beat them from Clinton to Obama culturally. This might be why despite having the house, senate, and white house the republicans could keep telling themselves they were the underdogs - culturally they are, and continue to be. So there will still be independents who are on the side of fighting the "progressive hegemony", and they by default go to trump. Instead of the skater punk in high school cussing and spitting in front of the nuns, its the kid on the computer intentionally calling someone the wrong pronouns.
> its the kid on the computer intentionally calling someone the wrong pronouns.
Today this, tomorrow goading someone (such as a trans person) into suicide, the next day egging on the person who says they're going to shoot up a synagogue.
The punk confronting nuns is doing so from the bottom of the power hierarchy, and achieving their freedom not at the expense of anyone else. The modern alt-right culture is looking for targets and hostile to anyone who asks for respect. A big difference.
> The punk confronting nuns is doing so from the bottom of the power hierarchy, and achieving their freedom not at the expense of anyone else. The modern alt-right culture is looking for targets and hostile to anyone who asks for respect.
I think you're incorrect about who holds the power culturally. Calling a person with XY chromosomes a man who prefers to be called a woman will result in firing, ejection from conferences and projects, or shunning — while on the other hand believing oneself to be a 'yellow-scaled wingless dragonkin' is allegedly no hindrance to working for Google.
I'm not taking a position here on whether it's right or wrong, just noting that right now it seems to me that the cultural Left has overwhelmingly won.
> Calling a person with XY chromosomes a man who prefers to be called a woman will result in firing, ejection from conferences and projects, or shunning
Most of the time it doesn't. Most of the time absolutely nothing happens. Certainly the traditional power hierarchy is unlikely to do much. It can also get you a position on a national newspaper. It's just that in a relatively few cases it's reached viral outrage level and something has actually been done.
This is the problem with the culture war: everything is fought over the highest-level most visible cases. All the low stakes of thousands of people are placed on a single case as an incredibly high stake. And the people are fired/deplatformed over it are very rarely innocents who have made a mistake on the first instance - it's nearly always people who knew what they were doing and chose to pick that fight, who happened to lose this time.
So in most situations the balance of power favours the traditional side; it's just that in a few cases the internet mob can focus the outrage laser and achieve dominant power. That's an unstable situation, certainly.
I quite agree that the “punching down” thing is different this time. The progressives haven’t consolidated yet - especially economically. The white cis male behind the computer screen definitely has the economic higher ground (or, his socioeracial status does). But, critically, I think they are punching “up” in terms of social status.
I don’t think, and we should all hope, that most people uncomfortable with pronouns are also those that egg on a synagogue shooter. There are levels here. Who’s going to give them a place to belong first?
Interesting way to phrase it. Taken literally it's absurd - obviously people aren't allergic to saying "he" and "she". Presumably you mean chosen pronouns. Where it comes down to a matter of someone asking for a tiny bit of respect. Some respond to that graciously, a lot of people go along with it indifferently, but a few regard it as a massive outrage to be asked to be respectful towards a stranger. They escalate it; they raise it to a "me or them" issue, and are surprised that some people choose to exclude them so that they can include trans people instead.
> Who’s going to give them a place to belong first?
What does this mean? Does it mean a place where necessarily trans people can't belong?
Certainly in the UK it's not a question of "belonging", most of the newspapers and large sections of all political parties have joined in the panic over trans people. Being anti-trans is tragically mainstream.
Interesting (and very icy) way to respond. I think you’re making assumptions about me here :)
I can think of more examples than those you’ve given. It can be people afraid to address people at all, because they’ve been hammered for getting it wrong in the past. Some figure it out, and some respond emotionally, reactively. It digs them a bigger hole. They decide that trans people and their allies are assholes, or bullies, and are holding the gun of social estrangement to their head. This isn’t the fault of the person who just wants to be respected as themselves - they’ve almost certainly experienced a metric fuckton of discrimination, lack of understanding, and hey maybe they’re just having a bad day and tired of fucking explaining it all the time, and then some ally who absolutely wants to have an argument right now starts brandishing a quote tweet.
All this shit can happen without them ever even knowing each other’s name. There are a lot of people (I’m thinking small town high school here) who have never even interacted with a trans person irl (IE - none of them are out). I just would want people to recognize - chosen pronouns just went from being a not even aware of in public thing to aware. It’s natural for people to be confused, or lack empathy at first. I get frustrated and say fuck a lot when I have to relearn hotkeys when I switch IDEs at work. If someone didn’t get the memo, assume goodwill, just like you are in this conversation.
I know all about TERFs. Thankfully I’ve yet to experience one irl.
> What does this mean? Does it mean a place where necessarily trans people can't belong?
It means it’s better for people to get better understanding than be welcomed with open arms by nazis. To the latter question - no.
We have an interesting display of the phenomenon I've been speaking of right here. Now that the Left is in power it has dropped all pretense of the devotion to freedom of speech and the marketplace of ideas that once supposedly was the core of its beliefs. It is lashing out in the same humorless ways the old WASP establishment did against barbs of the punks/hippies of yesteryear.
Perfect example here of the double standard. Your group demands respect for your sacred cow but have no respect for the sacred cows of others. People have also died over Allah, Buddha et al. Maybe they're just looking for a little respect too
You’re just comically wrong. Progressives control the universities. Right wingers are poor and disempowered. A right winger punching a progressive is punching up.
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RIP, Alfred E. Neumann! May you live forever in our minds and memories!