I just clipped and saved the image to the left, and then when I went to download it to this post could not find it. Finally I traced it to a file in my photographs called “Family Photos”, and I was going to move it to another file and then realized, wait, that’s probably the right place for it!
The man in the photo is Alfred E. Newman, a creation of William Gaines, also the man who gave us Mad Magazine. It still exists, part of DC Comics, but, you know, like the Beach Boys, still on tour, it’s not the same as it was. I have just a couple of stories about Mad Magazine, the first of which involves urban legends.
I was led to believe that William Gaines was a talented artist and humorist who could not find employment anywhere in entertainment or publishing because he was Jewish. In fact, his father, Max Gaines, was the publisher of All-American Comics division of DC Comics. In 1947 his father was killed in a motorboat accident on Lake Placid, and so Gaines quit school to take over the family business, EC Comics. He did OK, and otherwise was on his way to a career as a teacher. Instead, he worked in comic books. I find that a nobler profession.
Comic books came under investigation during the 1950s, an uptight decade if ever there was one. Gaines was called to testify before the Senate Committee on Juvenile Delinquency, headed by Estes Kefauver. Here’s a transcript of his testimony, from Wikipedia, so grain of salt needed, of course:
[Chief Counsel Herbert] Beaser:
Is the sole test of what you would put into your magazine whether it sells? Is there any limit you can think of that you would not put in a magazine because you thought a child should not see or read about it?
Gaines:No, I wouldn’t say that there is any limit for the reason you outlined. My only limits are the bounds of good taste, what I consider good taste.
Beaser:Then you think a child cannot in any way, in any way, shape, or manner, be hurt by anything that a child reads or sees?
Gaines:I don’t believe so.
Beaser:There would be no limit actually to what you put in the magazines?
Gaines:Only within the bounds of good taste.
Beaser:Your own good taste and saleability?
Gaines:Yes.Kefauver:
Here is your May 22 issue [Crime SuspenStories No. 22, cover date May]. This seems to be a man with a bloody axe holding a woman’s head up which has been severed from her body. Do you think that is in good taste?
Gaines:Yes sir, I do, for the cover of a horror comic. A cover in bad taste, for example, might be defined as holding the head a little higher so that the neck could be seen dripping blood from it, and moving the body over a little further so that the neck of the body could be seen to be bloody.
Kefauver:You have blood coming out of her mouth.
Gaines:A little.
Kefauver:Here is blood on the axe. I think most adults are shocked by that.
This was all before the founding of Mad Magazine, which is what I wanted to write about. I was born in 1950, and Mad was a presence in my life. We must have bought it off the newsstand, but I don’t remember how I came upon copies. It was a treasure for me and my brother Joe, and we each read it cover-to-cover. I guess you had to be there, but this was early humor taken in a direction that was the beginnings of movies like Airplane, Animal House, and even TV shows, Saturday Night Live, for instance, where early cast members were influenced by it. Just as Monty Python took humor to places unknown before, Mad was the trailblazer.
So, first, to dispense with the idea that Gaines suffered from prejudice and persecution, it appears he came from a wealthy or somewhat wealthy Jewish family, and the world was open before him to do as he wished with his life. As with many if not most of us, he bounced off a few rocks, but landed where he wanted to be, publishing a magazine that made fun of important people and of news and entertainment in general. He was counter-cultural. Jewish people have given us so much, as education and careers are so important to them, but I am most grateful for their humor. Most really funny people are Jewish.
It’s an interesting subject, as there are so many powerful Jews around … just ask Mel Gibson. Mr. Mathis frequently and derisively identifies people as Jews. It would not surprise me if most of Hollywood was indeed Jewish, possibly including Mr. Steve Martin himself? He has a habit of marrying Jewish women, but then Jewish women are generally very attractive, so that is not another clue for you all. I enjoyed this Oscar presentation with Martin and Alex Baldwin, so watch it all if you have ten minutes, and have a few laughs. Or go to 7:20 to see why I chose to link it here.**
I would be Jewish if I could. My name, Tokarski, is in the Jewish registry. But membership, I’m told, must come down on the maternal side, and my mother was Irish and very Catholic. And anyway, I am neither talented nor wealthy, so they don’t want me.
Here’s an example of why I do not qualify as Jew, why they would look at us askance. My brother Joe and I were so enamored of Mad Magazine that we decided to take our allowances and subscribe. We each received a dollar a week, and in those days most dollars were “silver” dollars, and not paper. So Joe and I each put our silver dollar in an envelope along with the subscription form from the magazine, and mailed it off.
We never got our subscription. Some time, maybe in my late thirties, I finally figured out why.
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** Also, go to 8:18 for mention of Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, and Jennifer Garner, and an odd joke … the three belong to our Bokanovsky Brats, virtually identical facial plates. Maybe their breeding is common knowledge in Hollywood
Piece of Mindful 
A Jewish friend of mine said most Jewish men are not attractive, but have money and marry for looks. Which is where the attractive women would come from. I think that’s a generalization though, there’s plenty of handsome Jewish men, since their ancestors had the money to find an attractive mate.
Mad magazine in the 1950s was indeed revolutionary. I found several very early Mads in my grandparents attic in the late 1970s when I was almost 10, I read them cover to cover and still have them. My brother and I also subscribed to MAD in the 1970s and early 1980s, I read it always. I used to love their parodies of films, and cartoon T&A was appealing to a young boy. From their send up of Saturday Night Fever I will always think of John Travolta as John Revolting.
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Mark, you say you would be Jewish if you could, but I personally don’t think its any kind of privilege. Many of the Jews I know have a persecution complex, and suffer high rates of depression. It’s more like a burden for them, and they feel like everyone is out to get them. Moreover, I have heard at Jewish weddings a Jew say they are “Gods chosen people” which makes me cringe.
For what it’s worth most people think I’m Jewish from my looks and education, as I had all Jewish academic advisors – they used to think I was the son of my PhD advisor, which I had no issue with. I don’t take offense to it, but am glad I don’t have to deal with all that baggage.
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To be honest Mark you’d be thrown out from any group of Jews in a New York minute. Because they police each other and do not tolerate dissenters. A jew always needs to stick up for another jew over a gentile, they are basically the original mafia. The rabbis have enormous power in their communities, and dissent from the mainstream results in expulsion very quickly. Independent thought is not tolerated. Which is why they are powerful. Choose one: power, or independence.
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As Groucho Marx said, I would never belong to a group that would have me as a member.
I was in Boy Scouts for a few months as a kid … we met in a church basement. At one meeting some leader suggested we play games, and I piped up “How about ring around the rosie?”
A short time later a leader said to me “We don’t talk like that here.” I did not last.
I would not make a good Jew. I know that. I just admire them, at least the ones I know.
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