The Organization Mad -- Parody as historical snapshot.

I'd argue that looking at what people chose to mock often gives us a better take on contemporary attitudes than you get from standard sources. There's a tendency to look upon previous generations as being a little bit simple-minded. All too often, we assume that they unquestioningly believed what they were told and were oblivious to what seems obvious in retrospect. For this reason, subtle satire is often missed by current readers. Fortunately, excessive subtlety is not, and has never been, a problem with Mad magazine.The second half of the '50s was a transition for Mad magazine. Its early years under Harvey Kurtzman had been distinctive and often brilliant but were largely a reflection of the editor's personality. When Al Feldstein took over, the magazine struggled for a while to find its identity before settling on a basic formula in the early '60s that would remain more or less constant for 40 or so years.This transition period was arguably the least impressive; it certainly has…