Growing Up in a Mad, Mad, Mad Magazine World: A Tribute

At 67, I am now almost the same age as MAD magazine, which is celebrating 70 years this month. I have been collecting them for nearly as long. Battered cardboard boxes filled with decades of well-read, dog-eared MAD magazines, have followed me in the trajectory of my life. From my childhood suburban bedroom in West Hempstead, Long Island, to my Upper West side apartment in Manhattan, they are now resting comfortably back on Long Island in the cool basement of my Huntington Village home.

Because of MAD I would be inoculated with a heavy dose of skepticism offering a lifetime of immunity from accepting institutional hypocrisy and dishonesty.

Growing up in the 1960s atomic age of nuclear families and nuclear jitters, cold warriors and hot wars, mad men and happy housewives, MAD’s cynical eye offered a road map to navigate this rapidly changing world. Because of MAD I would be inoculated with a heavy dose of skepticism offering a lifetime of immunity from accepting institutional hypocrisy and dishonesty.