Nothing Is Sacred

Back in elementary school, when I'd occasionally get sick, the big treat - the thing that made it all worthwhile - was the present I'd get toward the end of the afternoon; Mom and/or Dad would bring home a quart of Seven-Up and a MAD magazine.

Seven Up hasn't changed. MAD, unfortunately, has.

MAD was, of course, never sophisticated stuff - which is why it was the favorite humor mag of eight-year-olds nationwide.

I read my first issue in probably thirty years over the weekend.

Ugh.

While their cover parodies of current pop entertainment have always been dumb in a gloriously juvenile way that still gets a chuckle on, reading their "Wife Swap: Simpsons and Family Guy" bit was a little depressing; the writing, always slapdash, has gotten downright perfunctory.

Big deal, right? Right! It still drew a slapdash, gloriously juvenile chuckle. And it was at least non-political.

Now, when I was a kid it's entirely possible that MAD was awash in trite political commentary which either went over my head or, living in a Democrat household as I was, didn't catch my attention. Duly noted.

But two pieces in the MAD I read beat the reader over the head with all the subtlety of Don Martin drawing Linda Carter.

A pictorial, "Green Army Men for the Iraq War", showed updated plastic soldiers; "Abu Ghraib Guard" held a dog collar; "Sergeant Sexual Harrasser", a square-jawed lothario, pinched a shapely female clerk on the butt.

Mkay. The bit's a squib. It's MAD. No big.

But two pages later, the unforgiveable. A full page cartoon...

...by Ted Rall.

Never again.