Earlier this month, DC Comics announced that Mad Magazine will mostly stop doing what it's done for some six decades,

which is to pointedly mock American politics and culture.

Barring the occasional end-of-year special, future copies of Mad will consist solely of old material.

The publication, which first appeared in 1957,

hit a peak circulation of 2.8 million in 1973,

and has been in decline ever since,

leaving the younger people of today unable to recognize the gap-toothed grin of Mad Magazine mascot, Alfredi Newman,

which is why 37-year-old Pete Buttigieg didn't understand when Trump likened the presidential hopeful to the magazine's trademark cartoon coverboy.

Donald Trump today in an interview compared you to the Mad Magazine mascot and said

Alfred E. Newman can never be president. What's your response to it?

So I'll be honest I had to Google that. I guess it's a generational thing. I didn't get the reference.

In a recent piece for the nation, National Affairs correspondent Jeet here said that Mad Magazine defined an entire generation's distrust of the media,

politicians, advertisers, and all sorts of authority. And even the authorities, at least of a certain age,

recognize that. I thought that was very revealing because on the one hand you have Trump, who's lonesome,

but has a sort of populist touch, and he had the exact right reference, because

Buttigieg does look a little bit like Altony Newman.

And then you have Buttigieg touting his knowledge of James Joyce in Finnegan's Wake,

and not familiar with Mad magazine, although in some ways I would argue Mad Joyce in Finnegan's Wake and not familiar with Mad Magazine,

although in some ways I would argue Madd was the Finnegan's Wake of American childhood.

Imagine not even being completely facetious because Mad had a kind of density to it.

If you were a kid, there were a lot of references that you would not necessarily get.

Oh, God, the Mad Magazine Special Edition. They only put out 17 of these a year.

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