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1. Mad magazine was primarily read by kids between 9 and 14 years old. It was also the most important satirical magazine in American history. Let me explain.
2. Here's a story making fun of Joseph McCarthy from Mad #17 (done circa summer of 1954). It's a mash-up of McCarthy hearing with a TV game show, making fun not just of demagogue but also the new media that enabled him. 
3. The Mad sensibility, created by original editor Harvey Kurtzman, was abrasive, in-your-face rude. It was ethnic at a time (1950s) when America was increasingly white-bread (Kurtzman loved to pepper Yiddishism in his dialogue).
4. The abrasiveness of Mad stood in contrast to the more dominant form of American comedy, led by The New Yorker, which from 1940s-1950s was becoming increasingly low-keyed, subdued, cerebral, understated, button-downed.
5. In the sweep of American cultural history, Mad was the crucial link between the anarchic immigrant humor of the Marx Brothers in the 1920s/1930s & the insurgent counterculture of the 1960s and beyond.
6. The decision of Mad very early on to focus on media and advertising was crucial: in an increasingly media-dominated society, Mad picked the right target. Not taking advertising from 1957 to 2002 allowed MAD to go after people (cigarette companies) other media avoided
7. Patti Smith: “After Mad, drugs were nothing.” Without Mad, it's hard to imagine underground comics, National Lampoon, Saturday Night Live, the Simpons, the Onion, Stephen Colbert. Mad was the seedbed of an entire genre of media-focused satirical comedy.
8. More thoughts on Mad's legacy here: thenation.com/article/mad-ma…
