It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World. Or Was.

I dug Mad Magazine. My brain is wired to mock.

— Lalo Alcaraz

Sometimes Congressional investigations prompt criminal charges; sometimes, new laws; and sometimes, public outcries for justice and reform.

But a 1954 Congressional investigation prompted a new magazine.

Mad was the result of a bipartisan investigation of the comic book industry by the Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency.

Comic books—filled in the day with murder, mayhem and sex—were on the hot seat because experts had claimed that they corrupted young readers.

And Congress agreed: its investigation of the industry reached the conclusion that comic book publishers were de facto smut merchants who needed to be censored.

A "comics code" was written and a watchdog group set up.

One publisher, however, was of no mind to comply.

Entertaining Comics skirted Congress' directive by upping the trim size of its comic book Mad to that of a magazine and renaming the product Mad Magazine.

Magazines had no code or watchdog.

Free from censorship, Mad in its heyday entertained well over a million Baby Boomers a month, providing a steady stream of puerile parodies, cornball sendups, and idiotic satire.

Most of all, Mad represented relief from the stifling conformism and earnestness of the 1950s and '60s.

"Mad's consciousness of itself as trash, as enemy of parents and teachers, even as money-making enterprise, thrilled kids," The New York Times said on the occasion of magazine's 25th anniversary. 

"It was magical, objective proof to kids that they weren't alone, that there were people who knew that there was something wrong, phony and funny about a world of bomb shelters, brinkmanship and toothpaste smiles."

My favorite feature in every Mad was the TV show parody. I still remember some of the nutty titles the magazine gave to these spoofs:

• Walt Dizzy Presents
• The Rifle, Man!
• The Phewgitive
• Voyage to See What's on the Bottom
• 12 O'Crocked High
• Mission: Ridiculous
• The Flying Nut
• Kojerk
• Makeus Sickby
• The Straights of San Francisco
• Kung Fool
• The Dopes of Haphazzard

When they worked—which was often—Mad's spoofs excelled in their ability to transport you to a cartoon world where vile windbags and moronic stumblebums reigned—a grotesque and absurd world not unlike your parents' and teachers'. The characters were all gangly, their noses bulbous, their limbs marionettish, their clothes ill-fitting. When they spoke, they spoke in elaborate paragraphs that were studded with bombast and Yiddish slang which, unless you lived in a Jewish household, you only encountered in the pages of Mad.

Mad lasted on newsstands 67 years—much longer than anyone would have predicted. But, with the appearance of rivals Zap Comics and National Lampoon, Mad's best days were over by the 1970s.

According to The New Yorker, Mad "subverted the comic form into a mainstream ideological weapon aimed at icons of the left and the right—attacking both McCarthyism and the Beat Generation, Nixon and Kennedy, Hollywood and Madison Avenue."

I can’t remember the day when I fell in love with Mad. It was too long ago. But it was an inextricable rite of passage for every kid in the '50s and '60s at least to sample the zany sarcasm Mad dished out every month and to spend a few moments in a world where both the emperors and adults had no clothes.

I'll Order In

How will you celebrate Juneteenth?

I plan to spend the day in hiding.

No visitors.

No phone calls.

No social media.

Just me and the cat.

Maybe I'll read a novel (Native Son would be suitable).

I'm taking this lonely route because I fear I'll commit a faux pas.

Not that I wish to monetize Juneteenth, as Walmart tried to do.

I don't.

And not that I want to mark the holiday with some festive food, as the Children's Museum of Indianapolis tried to do.

I just want to lay low.

And I will.

Walmart's offense was patent.

The retailer introduced Juneteenth Ice Cream.

It met with a cold reception.

The Children's Museum committed a less blatant, but equally stinging, offense.

It put Juneteenth Watermelon Salad on its cafeteria menu.

You could say the salad got the museum in hot soup.

Both institutions had to eat crow.

But I won't have to: I'm going to avoid the Juneteenth minefield altogether.

Along with the picnics and block parties and family celebrations, the new federal holiday promises to usher in a heightened vigilance for racist tropes. I don't want to be in the vigilantes' gunsights. So, I'm cocooning.

Maybe I'll order in Chinese.

Above: New Dragon Takeout by Robert Francis James. Oil on canvas. 20 x 16 inches. Ships framed. Available here.

Poetic Facts

Myths which are believed in tend to become true.

— George Orwell

Conservatives love their myths.

They don't want to hear that Betsy Ross didn't design the American flag—no more than they want to hear that Blacks didn't arrive in America as "immigrants" or that Ronald Reagan didn't have an ounce of intelligence.

They'd much rather cherish myths.

Liberals aren't much different, when it comes to it.

They don't want to hear that early feminists didn't burn their bras or that Martin Luther King was less than a saint.

"If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it," Joseph Goebbels famously said.

The same holds for myths or, more accurately, "poetic facts."

The Betsy Ross Flag is one such poetic fact.

Betsy indeed worked as a seamstress in Philadelphia and was acquainted with George Washington, due to his occasional attendance of her church.

But that's as far as things went. 

That Betsy made our first flag was a yarn spun by her grandson, who in an 1870 speech claimed she'd been hired by Washington to design a flag for his army.

Harper's Weekly, an immensely popular magazine, picked up the speech and spread the tale nationwide.

Talk about "false flags."

The story was nothing but star-spangled bullshit.

"Every historian who’s looked into it has found no credible evidence that Betsy Ross made the first American flag," historian Marc Leepson told National Geographic last year.

The "Betsy Ross Flag" is a myth made of whole cloth.

And it's become lodged in the fabric of history—much like the "voluntary" nature of slavery and the "genius" of Ronald Reagan.

An analogous tall tale concerns how the Betsy Ross Flag was unveiled.

Flags in general weren't flown by infantry during the Revolutionary War; they were flown only by ships and forts.

But that fact didn't deter patriotic Delawareans from insisting the Betsy Ross Flag was unfurled for the first time at Cooch's Bridge, site of the only Revolutionary War battle in the state.

Cooch's Bridge—fought September 3, 1777—was a British victory, so perhaps the fiction felt consoling.

Howard Pyle's The Nation Makers

The hard facts were: the Continental Congress indeed resolved—on June 14, 1777—that the nation would adopt a flag comprising stars and stripes; and it made that resolution public three months later—on the very day of the Battle of Cooch's Bridge.

And so it seems the first announcement of the flag became the first appearance of the flag.

The fiction took root in Delawareans' imaginations not in 1777, but in 1940, when it was included in The Battle of Cooch’s Bridge, whose author claimed that "circumstantial evidence" proved the story to be true.

And the circumstantial evidence? 

A "history painting" by Delaware artist Howard Pyle that appeared on the cover of Collier's Magazine in June 1906.

Pretty flimsy evidence—especially when you consider the painting depicted another battle altogether.

Historian Wade Catts told National Geographic the Betsy Ross Flag wasn't carried into the Battle of Cooch's Bridge for practical reasons.

"The American formation fought as an ad hoc light infantry corps," Catts said. "The whole purpose of the infantry was stealth and secrecy, so it is highly unlikely they would have carried a flag into battle."

But how much more comforting is it to cherish the poetic fact that the embattled Americans carried the Betsy Ross Flag into the Battle of Cooch's Bridge?

And how unromantic to say that it never happened.

As the late historian Ed Bearss was fond of saying, "It never happened—but it should have."

Mother of Muses

Sing of the heroes who stood alone,

whose names are engraved on tablets of stone.

— Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan's "Mother of Muses," critics agree, is among the singer-songwriter's finest pieces. 

Released in 2020—seven decades after his arrival in New York as a fresh-faced folkie from Minnesota—the song represents a collage of archaic people and events that Dylan counts as sources of inspiration.

Sing of Sherman, Montgomery and Scott,
Sing of Zhukov and Patton and the battles they fought,
Who cleared the path for Presley to sing, 

Who carved out the path for Martin Luther King,
Who did what they did and then went on their way,
Man, I could tell their stories all day.

Romping the "old, weird America," Dylan is like a vacuum cleaner whose bag never gets emptied.

He compiles, more than composes; derives, more than devises—pastiching from the sourcebook we call American History and hoping listeners never forget that "we stand on the shoulders of giants."

"All ideas are second-hand, consciously and unconsciously drawn from a million outside sources," Mark Twain said. "There is not a rag of originality about them."

That's certainly true of Dylan's murky lyrics. As a songwriter, he's is like a dealer at an antiques mall or a docent at a roadside attraction, ready to regale you with lore about obscure objects and eccentric people.

Listening to his words is like taking vacation with Sarah Vowell.

"When Bob Dylan performs, he channels a whole universe of time-weathered emotions, ideas, and legacies," says Giovanni Russonello, music critic for The New York Times. 

His rootedness makes him an "ambassador for the country's past and its indelible ideals."

In his memoir, Chronicles, Dylan describes songwriting as inheritance, a process of "converting something that exists into something that didn't."

"Mother of Muses" acknowledges just a few of the dusty items in the cabinet.

There are thousands more in Dylan's catalog.

NOTE: Bob Dylan turned 81 May 24.

Altered States

Good news: Uvalde looks like the national tipping point in gun control.

Federal reform, of course, is impossible, because the NRA owns the GOP.

But it doesn't own every governor, making blue-state reforms quite feasible.

My own governor and the Democratic leadership in Delaware's legislature right now are pushing a "historic" package of six gun-control reforms.

The reforms would:

• Raise the age to purchase guns to 21; 
• Strengthen background checks; 
• Ban the sale of assault weapons; 
• Ban the accessories used to turn handguns into AR-15s; 
• Ban high-capacity magazines; and
• Hold gun manufacturers and dealers liable for recklessness.

"We have an obligation to do everything we can to prevent tragedies,” Delaware's governor said Thursday in a news release. "I look forward to seeing these bills on my desk this session.”

Other blue states' governors are pushing similar reforms.

If the governors succeed, as I believe they will, we'll soon find ourselves an even more "divided nation." 

There will be gun-safe states and gun-loving states. 

NRA-free states and NRA-owned states. 

Blue states and red states. 

That's red as in blood.

And that's okay, in my book, because parents can simply pick up and move from a red to a blue state.

If they value their kids' lives, they can relocate.

Sure, the housing is tight in the blue states; but the schools and libraries are better, and the jobs plentiful.

Let the red states relish their militarized weapons—and the weekly mass shootings that stem from them.

We blue-state citizens will send them thoughts and prayers.