There's no National Lampoon, is there? Back issues of that mag are $2 on eBay, and eBay bootleggers try to get $8.00 for a DVD-R containing every issue in PDF format.
Mad Magazine has gone from a 2 million circulation monthly to a 250,000 circulation quarterly.
Still, if you do something offensive in the name of "sick humor" or "black humor" or deliberate tastelessness, you WILL get noticed.
The NY Post headlined a piece on the HARVARD LAMPOON:
What the NY Post didn't do was SHOW the image.
How could they, when it was tasteless, and "anti-Semitic," and they'd be accused of making things worse by showing it?
They got around this in a weasel way.
They offered a link to somebody's TWITTER post.
Now that we actually SEE the image, we see that it is NOT anti-Semitic.
Anti-Semitism is a term thrown around with the same zeal that we hear "He a Racist" or "We are LATINO not HISPANIC."
After a while, the PC mewling becomes more OFFENSIVE than the offending item.
In England, a veteran comedian named Danny Baker apologized for a dumb photo gag. He had a habit of equating toffs and royalty with chimps, and ran a photo of a chimp, suggesting it was the newborn "royal baby." Ah...he really should've known that the newborn is one-fourth black, the bride being half-black, and that this was not just OFFENSIVE but RACIST.
He apologized instantly but was canned by the BBC anyway. Which only led SOME people to wonder why it is that any and every kneejerk howl of "RACISM" now brings a fiscal death penalty.
Here, the apology from the Harvard Lampoon has apparently been grudgingly accept, the same as the apology from the New York Times for THIS editorial cartoon, depicting a Jew as a dog:
Danny Baker, equating a royal baby with a chimp: FIRE HIM.
The New York Times using the very well known "Jew=Dog" stereotype that was seen all over Nazi Germany? Oh, don't fire ANYONE. Certainly not the editor who OK'd publication or the art director who paid the cartoonist.
I think it's more than fair, and proper, for this badly done collage to be condemned.
But do it as OFFENSIVE and don't go overboard about ANTI-SEMITISM. Same way you can say Danny Baker had a very stupid lapse in taste and was OFFENSIVE, but is not a racist.
A racist implies somebody who automatically avoids a racial group and even works to bully members of the group. Being "offensive" could imply have a screw loose but that, as Mort Sahl liked to say, everyone's a target: "Is there any group I haven't offended?"
What's the real message of the collage? The Latino (not HISPANIC!) creator of this thing probably, in his wise-ass way, was intending a mere SEXIST message: think of all the hot women who died in the Holocaust.
If you're in a bent frame of mind, this could even be a good thing. The stereotype of the Jewish woman is Golda Meir. Judge Judy. Roseanne Barr. People need to know that Lauren Bacall was Jewish. Natalie Portman is Jewish. Bess Myerson was a Jewish Miss America. Even Scarlett Johansson is Jewish.
There was a time when black women were similarly stereotyped. Ethel Waters. Hattie McDaniel. Big fat mammies. It was up to Lenny Bruce to memorably ask, "Would you sleep with a black black woman, or a white white woman? The black woman is Lena Horne. The white woman is Kate Smith! Now...it's not about color is it..."
Lenny was once photographed holding up a joke headline about "SIX MILLION JEWS FOUND ALIVE IN ARGENTINA."
I somehow doubt that Lenny Bruce, Mel "Springtime for Hitler" Brooks, Mort Sahl, Shelley Berman, or other Jewish comedians who have been called "sick" and guilty of "poor taste," would cry "anti-Semitism" about the Harvard Lampoon's collage. This, even if the Harvard Lampoon is a WASP-y magazine known more for publishing a George Plimpton or Conan O'Brien than anybody Jewish.
The phrase "too soon" seems to have been coined by comedians telling Lincoln jokes. You know those: "Aside from that, how did you like the play, Mrs. Lincoln?"
Starting in the late 50's, "sick humor" became a strong entity on stage, on records, in magazines and comic books. Even "MAD" and "SICK" and "CRACKED" all supposedly aimed at teen kids, were part of this.
"Sick humor" was in part an attempt to fight back against our mad, mad, mad, mad world. To out-Herod Herod. To show that humor was more powerful than evil. To make brutal fun out of the unfunny. Pick your own explanation.
Some people don't like it. No reason they should. If something offends you, speak out. But be careful when it comes to censorship, and let's have a uniform response for the punishment. Why is it the New York Times editor wasn't fired for that Netanyahu cartoon, but Danny Baker was fired for a Tweet? The BBC didn't authorize Danny's Tweet, but they fired him. The Philadelphia Flyers did a kneejerk destruction on Kate Smith's statue for nothing.
The reaction here? By all means, stand up. Demand to be heard. Point out that the Harvard Lampoon is guilty of "poor taste" or "offensive" humor. But don't go overboard with sanctimonious screeches about "anti-Semitism." Save THAT for the bastard who shot up the synagogue in California. Don't trivialize it by throwing it at a collage in a comedy magazine.
This isn't the first time we've seen this "oooh, it's the Holocaust, there's NOTHING funny about it" attitude. It most famously surfaced in complaints about "Hogan's Heroes" being on TV, and "Life is Beautiful" being allowed in movie theaters. NO, Mel Brooks NOTHING is funny about "Springtime for Hitler" either. And yet, millions found nothing wrong with these things. They were made aware that there's a serious issue underneath, but, hey, someone slipping on a banana peel could dislocate a hip and have complications and die. So what's funny about THAT?
I can't speak for Mr. Collage, but I think he was talking to stupid Millennials who COULD be anti-Semitic and who DO trivialize the Holocaust and even say it never happened. By showing Anne Frank is a buxom adult, he was saying, ala Lenny Bruce, "NOW how do you feel? You could've tapped this if you hadn't killed her. Just as you should realize Lena Horne is hotter than Kate Smith even if she's NOT WHITE."
Beauty, and offensiveness, is in the eye of the beholder. Sometimes comedy makes a point by being brutal, sick or offensive. Sometimes it makes a point about human nature.
The Lincoln joke. Isn't it really about human nature? That there would be some Pollyanna assholes who'd ignore one of the greatest tragedies in American history? Was that joke Anti-Lincoln??
How about Monty Python and the guys on the cross who whistle "Always look on the bright side of life?" Is that really an anti-Christian scene, or a statement made about an insane type of optimism?
"Life is Beautiful" used the Holocaust as a setting for a film that offered courage, humor, compassion, and a very sobering ending. It didn't deserve the small-minded shouts of "Anti-Semitism...ban it...don't let it be shown!"
Similarly, we have the "chimp" moment in the film "Cabaret." It was a gorilla, actually. That dance scene of man and gorilla started out hilarious, until the hideous and very anti-Semitic punchline.
Here, I think the message, clumsy as it was, but aimed at dolts mostly, was "hey, do NOT kill. You're killing somebody you might actually want to make love to."
Not every cartoon hits the mark, nor every movie scene. People walk out of nightclubs every night. They write angry letters to the editor. Fine. We need to draw the line on hurling people out of show business, showing no mercy and allowing no apology, and most certainly in blowing up "I'm offended" into a charge of brutality and hatred toward an entire race and a false cry of racism or sexism.
If Lenny Bruce was the editor of the Harvard Lampoon would he have shaken his head and said, "No, that's rejected?" I think not. Would he have calculated that a few people might be offended? Yes. Would he have figured that the message, which is that the Holocaust "sucked" be worth it? Yes.
A gag about a President shot in the head or a girl forced to hide in a narrow space only to be forced out and murdered...we can say "Too Soon" or "bad taste." And we should express our doubts. But perhaps the humorists involved should not be automatically marked as "sickos" or unpatriotic or anti-Semitic. Maybe that too, is "going too far."
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