I just read that MAD Magazine is going to cease publishing.
As a kid, MAD gave me permission to be irreverent, but more important, it allowed me to look behind the curtain, to question Authority, and to find the real Truth that underlied the Ozzie and Harriet worldview that was being spoon fed to us in the 1950s . Nothing against O and H, only the world as the media, the advertisers, and other big shots presented it. I guess it was an Eisenhower thing (no offense to Ike either. After all, he warned us about the Military Industrial Complex).
On a personal level, it allowed me to not take myself seriously, and helped define my Bullshit Detector.
If you believe, as I do, that laughter is the best medicine, it was regular doses of MAD that kept us healthy.
MAD was the Old Testament for Rowan and Martin’s Laugh in and George Carlin, and I suspect that if you looked under the bed of a Saturday Night Live or Simpsons writer, you were just as likely to find a MAD as a Playboy.
If MAD was the Bible, then Groucho was the High Priest.
Jimmy's Place 