Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2016/10/10/imagine-rewritten-by-donal.html
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You MAD bro?
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No, but I think somebody else is.
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Are we playing “Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions”? 
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I’m reminded of this little number (which popped up on my Google Play random a year or so ago, much to my surprise; I wasn’t paying attention to the lyrics, until it got to the seventh stanza…).
LYRICS:
Motherhood, family
Baseball and basic courtesy
Picnics in the park
And real Christmas trees
Folks put 'em down or say they’re quaint
But you and I both know they ain’t
So when they tell ya “time to move along”
Tell 'em back “no siree!”
Times may change, but important values? Never!
Tradition needs to be maintained forever
We can do it together
A lovely figure, smiling face
Graceful and quiet and knows her place
Always ready with a double scotch and a BLT
Tender hands to rub your back
Angel in the kitchen, devil in the sack
When the ladies say it’s better now
Ya’ tell 'em back “No siree!”
Safe and quiet neighborhoods
Where everybody speak-a-da English good
No lower-class or Catholic types
Next door to me
Folks took pride in shining shoes
And a whole separate country club for the Jews
When they tell ya things are better now
We both say “No siree!”
Me and you, pal, makin’ the future brighter
Wholesomer, respectfuller, and whiter
Everybody tryin’ to change things 'round
Bring 'em on; together, we’ll take 'em down
Them trigger-happy low-downs, a-fixin’ for a showdown
Hoods and punks and foreigners, slackin’ on the corner
Dirty hippie losers, reefer-weed abusers
Commie pinko fairies, thinkin’ they can scare me
To them we’re gonna say…
“No siree!”
To quote the person who posted it at YouTube: “If you find yourself agreeing with any of the sentiments in this song, congratulations! You’re a terrible person!”
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I reproduced the page and lyrics to remove the picture-based DRM just in case you can’t read it for some reason:
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One thing I liked about MAD when I was a kid is I never felt it talked down to me. Writers like Dick DeBartolo say they just wrote what they thought was funny and hoped kids would get the jokes too. I didn’t always but that made MAD educational; I wanted to get the jokes.
Even with the passing of so much of the original Gang of Idiots I’m glad that continues.
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I have fond memories too. Now my own kids are reading it, or at least I’m trying to get them to, but so far not as much of a hit as I would have thought.
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So much of it is timeless.
I remember when I was young I picked up stack of back issues from a garage sale, all from the 1970s.
Obviously the TV and movie parodies went right over my head, but so much of other the jokes and humor were still very funny and insightful. Even the stuff that was obvious to me to be completely dated (disco! hippies! gas crisis! prog rock! lol!) still resonated with me in some manner.
Years later after being familiar with much of the content and cultural references they were lampooning I re-read all of those back issues and found much of the humor to be even more on the nose than I originally imagined.
It’s a rare talent to have humor accessible on so many levels (from boobs for the teens to serious social commentary for the adults) without dumbing down the content.
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My kid’s introduction to social critique and satire is MAD Magazine. [quote=“ficuswhisperer, post:13, topic:87145”]
It’s a rare talent to have humor accessible on so many levels (from boobs for the teens to serious social commentary for the adults) without dumbing down the content.
[/quote]
I’m embarrassed to say what age I was when I first understood the Wassermann inoculation jokes from early issues. And only when my kid encountered the treasure that is Harvey Kurtzman-era MAD magazine did I figure out that the Katzenjammer kids were quoting Nietzsche. My kid still says “Starchy” and “Bottleneck” instead of Archie and Jughead because that’s what he knows.
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