Why We Need to Laugh at the Insurrectionists
Times are less bleak when we realize we’re not alone
When I was about eight or nine years old, I discovered MAD magazine. I was already a big reader of comic books, like many prepubescent boys, and a fan of science fiction. But MAD was different. If it had a motto, it was “no sacred cows.” Everything was subject to parody, especially uptight straight people and their cultural assumptions. Cold Warriors, Hollywood, the rich, sports, politicians, fashion, commercialism, advertising — they all were lacerated by MAD’s wacky cartoonists. Even the nonconformist hippies got teased for conforming to their own new rules of comportment. Were some of MAD’s illustrations sexist or racist? I’m sure if you look at it now, there’s plenty there that would ruffle today’s more inclusive sensibilities. But for a kid just starting to be aware of the larger world and its hypocrisies, MAD was a gateway drug. It taught me to question authority. It made me laugh.
And as we kids passed copies of the magazine back and forth, giggling at its jokes, MAD showed us that there was another version of America than the one we were being force-taught at school: an America that riven by unresolved contradictions and still unfinished, along with lots of Americans who were aware of those problems and trying to fix them. As R. Crumb, one of its…
