Alas, poor Mad magazine, pulled under by its own humor wave
Most obviously, Mad failed to keep up with the rapidly accelerating and expanding comedy universe that it helped to initiate and inspire. The vast proliferation of topical humor that has resulted across various media has turned Mad into a tortoise among jackrabbits.
After all, why wait a month for the next issue of Mad when the next "Saturday Night Live," late-night comedy show or your Twitter feed offer sidesplitting on-point punchlines -- once you scroll through a lot of rubbish -- from a universe of idiots in real time?
I was jerked alert to how much things had changed when President Donald Trump dismissed the entry of South Bend, Ind., mayor Pete Buttigieg into the Democratic presidential race by calling him "Alfred E. Neuman." To which 37-year-old Buttigieg responded by asking, who is Alfred E. Neuman?
"I'll be honest," he told reporters. "I had to Google that. I guess it's just a generational thing."
Ouch, I thought. There goes the baby boomer vote.
But the lovable gang of idiots at Mad responded appropriately with the tweet, "Who's Pete Buttigieg? Must be a generational thing."
That's the sort of lovable irreverence that impressed me as a fifth grader at my neighborhood drugstore, perusing the black-and-white pages of this odd comic book. It pushed important new waves of irreverence and reality in our politics and media fantasies, until it was taken under by its own wave.
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(E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@chicagotribune.com.)
(c) 2019 CLARENCE PAGE DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.
