What, me worry? RIP Mad

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Jokes aside, I loved Mad Magazine as a kid. When I was in graduate school, I got to meet Al Jaffee when he donated his papers to the library and gave a talk about his career. I'm not sure what it says about me that the highlight of my educational experience was meeting the guy who invented the Fold-In and wrote "Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions," but it was pretty cool.

 

One of my favourites:
Mom to squabbling siblings: "If you two don't stop fighting I'll knock your heads together!"
Kid: "Say now ... that'll make us like each other".

 

Weird Al Jankovic wrote a beautiful tribute to Mad Magazine when the news came down. It's one of the dozen things I've seen on Twitter that have knocked my socks off.

 

I don't think MAD changed so much as the world became more absurd. When MAD would do something about Nixon, what they were saying wasn't factually true, but you kind of felt that secretly, that was what Nixon thought. If you quote some of things that Trump said, they would be too absurd for MAD magazine.

 

Add to that the ubiquitous conspiracy theories easily within reach, and there's hardly a place for MAD to go that hasn't already been covered.

 

It became very simple for MAD. They couldn't laugh or lampoon some of this stuff in good conscience, it's too damned dismal. There's nothing funny about a paedophile ring.

Also, not for nothing, but 70 years is a good run for a magazine in a new-media ecosystem. The American magazine dates to the 1830s and has always been erratic.