MAD magazine and I were
born the same year, 1952. As a children’s magazine, MAD instilled in us a
healthy disrespect for authority, laying the philosophical groundwork for the
hippie revolution which was based on opposition to militarism, racism, and
sexism.
MAD’s editor Al Feldstein, along with
American poet laureate Robert Frost, deserves credit for inspiring the
Woodstock generation to heed John F. Kennedy’s admonition to “Ask not what
your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.”
Ps--A little known fact is that Robert
Frost and Jay Ward, creator of Rocky & Bullwinkle, were both born in San
Francisco, home to the Summer of Love in 1967.