A long-standing (67 years) humor tradition is going away, at least as a contemporary print entity:
‘Mad Magazine’ Is Effectively Shutting Down --
https://www.rollingstone.com/culture...g-down-855767/
For a lot of people of my age and younger,
MAD was an introduction to satire and parody of all persons, places, things, foibles, fads, follies, and other aspects of contemporary life. The magazine, for almost all of its run, eschewed accepting outside advertisers so as to not be beholden to influences that might try to blunt their satirical arrows. The freewheeling "usual gang of idiots" who wrote, illustrated, and published the magazine produced some of the funniest, on target humor around and very often gave witness to the old saying of "there is oft truth in jest" or as Shakespeare put it "Jesters do oft prove prophets". But the magazine often found many of its targets were more flattered to be lampooned by
MAD rather than offended...
For myself, I was hooked on the magazine when I found a copy on the newsstand of the only Walgreen's store in San Francisco; a good many 'respectable' newsstands wouldn't stock MAD Magazine due to some of its content, deemed somewhat offensive at the time, so, when I found Walgreen's had the goods, I became a regular customer (I also first found Canada Wintergreen Mints there). Between
MAD and the copies of the UK's
Punch Magazine I used t read at the public library, I had a pretty good education in the value of skeptical cynicism. Over the decades, I turned on a lot of people to
MAD, most notably one of my ex's who one day found one of my copies and started to read the issue; she was a bit of a prude about certain things and not a bit conservative, so, as she started to read there was a lot of 'harumphing' and 'tsk, tsk'-ing, but that was later replaced by roars of laughter; she also had me dig out every issue I had saved over the years and she devoured all of them; later she would insist on reading any new issues or MAD Books I would buy as soon as I got them. Story of my life: I'm either perverting them or pissing them off...
Goodbye,
MAD Magazine, old friend. Thanks for making the illogic of life a bit more bearable and, really, a whole lot funnier...
<O>
