Cultural Creatives

Often overlooked in the celebrated cultural icons emanating from The City by the Bay is Jay Ward, creator and producer of animated TV cartoon shows, including the revolutionary Rocky and Bullwinkle. Ward, along with Al Feldstein, editor of MAD magazine, instilled in my generation a healthy distrust of politicians, as well as disbelief in conventional wisdom. It is perhaps not a stretch to say these two cultural creatives of the 1950s laid the essential groundwork for the hippie counterculture of the 1960s.