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MAD Magazine tired of mocking Trump...but they’ll keep doing it
The staff of the American humor magazine Mad are sick and tired of making fun of US President Donald Trump—but that won’t stop them from giving the people what they want.
Editor John Ficarra told Fast Company that the Trump fatigue is real.
“There is terrible, horrible Trump fatigue at the Mad offices!” he said. “We are soooooo sick of doing Trump stuff. But it’s very clear from magazine sales and blog post numbers that our readers want us to satirize him. And, as senior editor Joe Raiola is fond of saying, ‘There’s nothing wrong with giving the people what they want.’ ”
Mad’s spoofing of Trump has evolved over time. It began by poking fun at his hair and theatricality, then moved on to spoofing his provocative rhetoric during his campaign trail.
“Now that he’s President, the game has shifted once again,” stated Ficarra. “It’s much more serious because what he says and does now can have real consequences.”
Of course, you can’t spoof Trump without ridiculing the people closest to him.
“Sean Spicer, Kellyanne Conway, and Steve Bannon continue to give us areas of great material, so we don’t have to always go after Trump directly,” he explained. “How the Republican party has pretty much bent over for anything he has said or done gives us fodder.”
He added: “Likewise, how the Democrats respond or don’t respond will also give us some opportunity for material.” That should quell any accusations that the satirical magazine is biased against one specific party. In fact, Mad has ridiculed Obama and Clinton in past issues.
Ficarra affirmed the magazine’s lack of political agenda: “We just go after the person in power and the stupid things he or she does.”
Satirizing the Leader of the Free World is hard work.
“The question I get most asked these days is, ‘How do we satirize Trump when he’s a parody of himself to begin with?’” Ficarra said. “It ain’t easy. We do the best we can in the time we have and hope we’ve made a point. My goal for 2017 is to have Trump tweet something nasty about us. I have my mother making a novena about it.”
Mad was founded in 1952 by Harvey Kurtzman. The magazine makes fun of anything and everything under the sun, from politics, to pop culture, to social trends. — BM, GMA News
