“Yes, Me Worry!”

I have to admit that I was not what you would call an “avid” reader when I was a teenager and, If I am being completely honest, that lasted until I went back to school in my mid-thirties. However, Mad Magazine was definitely the exception. I devoured it from cover to cover as soon as it was available. If you were a fan (maybe you still are), you will remember “Spy vs Spy” (created by Antonio Prohias), the magazine’s answer to the “cold war” with classic black and white spies taking turns having the upper hand. There was also a “gray” female spy added in 1962-1965, returning after a 40 year hiatus from 2005-2020. In the gray spy’s later run, she always prevailed. How about “The Lighter Side Of” (Dave Berg 1961-2002)? This feature satirized, among other things, the suburban lifestyle, capitalism, and the generation gap. After all these years, the one I remember was of a group of women in a kitchen playing bridge when they hear screaming from the other room where their young children are supposedly playing. Each mother claims that she recognized that it was her child doing the screaming, but on the last panel when they all go to the room where the kids are, it is actually the dog screaming because the little brats are pulling the dog’s tail.

My favorite feature was the movie (TV) parodies, which began in Aug./Sept. of 1953 with a spoof of the 1933 movie “King Kong,” titled: “Ping Pong.” A few that I remember from 1968 were as follows: “The Graduate” – “The Post Graduate;” “Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner?” – “Guess Who’s Throwing Up Dinner?;” and one of my all time favorites “Rosemary’s Baby”- “Rosemia’s Boo Boo.” There were around 40 more features that appeared on a less-regular basis including: “Scenes We’d Like To See,” “Believe It or Nuts!” “Horrifying Clichés,” and “You Know You’re Really ________ When…”  There were two others by Sergio Aragonés: “A Mad Look At” (a series of gag strips with a common theme), and “Drawn Out Dramas” (small gag images that appeared in the top corner margins of pages).

What got me thinking about Alfred E. Neuman and his famous “intellectually incurious” motto, which you will all remember as “What, Me Worry?” was some searching I was doing the other night. But before I get into that, why I changed the motto. In reality I did not change it, as my title was actually used for one issue of the magazine in 1979 after the Three Mile Island accident, which is understandable for sure. But since 1979, there could have been many more issues with this altered motto. Harvey Kurtzman first spotted the image that became Neuman on a postcard, and for him the image screamed: “I don’t have a care in the world, except mischief.” The character’s first magazine appearance was Mad #21 (March 1955). Neuman has been “smirking” at us ever since.

The “search” that led me here was simply: Trump news. Why? Fair question. There are two reasons: 1). I was curious to see what popped-up on my screen, although I had a pretty good idea what I would find given what is going on these days; 2). I was really getting fed up with seeing story after story about Kelce and Swift, or Swift and Kelce, depending upon whether or not… actually, does anybody really give a shit? If you do, my humblest apologies! After I typed in those two words, “Trump news,” the first page yielded 75 headline stories on the former (insert adjective here) president of this country. For the record, the fact that I am letting you, my dear reader, fill in the blank, is an indicator of sorts as to which way my own adjective choice would lean. The “stories,” and I use that term very, very lightly, were about the variety of interrelated “offenses” swirling around Trump these days from the “usual” sources, and then from some “not-so-usual” sources. All the “biggies” were there: FOX, ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, CNBC, MSNBC, CNBC, The Guardian, and on and on it goes. I read a smattering of these and got what I expected. It got decidedly more interesting and “worrisome” when I clicked on some of the not-so-usual sites.

For example: Benzinga.com, which is primarily a financial news site started by Jason Raznick who, according to their mission statement, favors “rule breakers, dreamers, and doers.” Need I say more? Then there is Politic.com, now owned by German publisher Axel Springer, who offer, according to them, “fast-paced reporting in ‘granular detail’ (whatever the hell that is) similar to sports analysis. In other words, you get the scores, but have no clue what went on in the game. Yeah, that sounds about right. Next up, Axios (from the Greek word for “worthy”), which offers a “brief, matter-of-fact reporting style with articles less than 300 words and with bullet points. You know when you don’t have time to find out what’s really going on. Last, but certainly not least, there is Complex Networks, started by a fashion designer, that reports on emerging trends in “style, sneakers, music, sports, and pop culture.” Why would they be reporting on Trump, you might ask? Damned if I know.

There are many more of these that, quite frankly, scared the shit out of me, and as I clicked on them to see what they had to offer, that is when the worry kicked in. I not only worried about seeing more of this in my feed, but also about being flagged, and monitored, by some “agency,” only to be put on some watch list, which eventually leads to a knock at my door…Paranoid? Nah, just too much science fiction…wink, wink! “What, Me Worry?” “Yes., Me Worry!”

Los Angeles 2023