April 14, 2015

Mad Magazine pre-apologizes...

... for this...



I didn't go looking for Hillary-Clinton-related trouble. I was poking around Mad Magazine because — in the light of dawn — that last post from yesterday, "Meade IM's from the deck," makes it look like Meade is the large avocado plant in the pot, and that made me think of the old Mad Magazine meme from the 1960s, Arthur. Arthur is not well-documented on the web. I see a short reference in the "Running gags and recurring images" section of the Wikipedia article "Recurring features in Mad (magazine)":
Some of the magazine's visual elements are whimsical, frequently appearing in the artwork without context or explanation. Among these are a potted avocado plant named Arthur (reportedly based on art director John Putnam's personal marijuana plant); a domed trashcan wearing an overcoat; a pointing six-fingered hand; the Mad Zeppelin (which more closely resembles an early experimental non-rigid airship; and an emaciated long-beaked creature who went unidentified for decades before being dubbed "Flip the Bird."
The avocado may have represented a marijuana plant back then, but nothing — nothing at all — represented a penis. Ah! The lost innocence!

ADDED: By the way, Hillary's new logo really is terrible. If this were a design class, and the assignment were to make a logo for Hillary, I would think the teacher would get mad at a student who handed in that one. What, did you spend one minute on the assignment? You just did the most obvious thing, the letter H, the colors blue and red, and an arrow, the most cliché logo element possible?! An arrow to signify moving forward! That's what you came up with?

63 comments:

Heartless Aztec said...

Going on 60 years as a viable satirical voice. A good friend was an airline pilot and one day he looked over to the right hand seat and his copilot was reading Mad magazine. He said the guy looked like he was twelve years old. Some things are constant in this universe...

Heartless Aztec said...

Addendum - that would be going on 70 years as a viable satirical voice.

Ann Althouse said...

"Flip the Bird" refers to a penis but I don't think the bird at least not with that name was there in the 60s.

Heartless Aztec said...

I read a recent issue just the other month. Knicked it off a friend's grandson.

paminwi said...

Lots of people have been making fun of Hilary's new logo. Imaginative people are having a heyday!

Brando said...

The logo is bland and uninspired. It represents her campaign perfectly.

I used to love MAD as a kid, and collected their older issues at garage sales--solid, sharp satire and a great peek into the pop culture of the time. I don't know how the magazine has fared since the '90s though.

rehajm said...

Maybe not a literal penis, but there was a Mad Fold-In of Bill and Hill from '95.

rehajm said...

Lots of Dick Nixon, too.

rehajm said...

The 'Spiro Agnew' anagram, as well.

Kylos said...

I think you can make something out of the Hillary logo if you rotate it 90 deg. clockwise.

pm317 said...

the logo is terrible.

Anonymous said...

I like that "forward" is to the right.

Meade said...

Someone described it looking "like the Hospital sign on the freeway."

Saint Croix said...

I like that "forward" is to the right.

That was my reaction! Hillary wants to move us to the right. To the right of Obama.

Come on, blue states! Follow the red arrow. To the right we go.

Did she pay money to come up with this? Did she ask Rush Limbaugh for design help? Does her subconscious want some unknown leftist to come in and destroy her candidacy again so she can stay home and bake cookies? Stay tuned!

Meade said...

"pre-apologize" sounds a little "priapic"

Tank said...

Shouldn't the logo be a V ?

Too unsubtle?

Meade said...

for elections lasting more than 12 years, pull off the highway and see your physician

Laslo Spatula said...

The Red Arrow represents Hillary's tongue. The Blue 'H' actually represents Huma.

Huma probably wishes the arrow flicked in a few other directions at times.

I am Laslo.

Curious George said...

"Graphic Artist Found Dead in Fort Marcy Park"

Laslo Spatula said...

"The Red Arrow represents Hillary's tongue. The Blue 'H' actually represents Huma.

Huma probably wishes the arrow flicked in a few other directions at times."

That was a cunnilingus joke. Because there are rumors about Hillary and Huma being lesbians. And the lesbian form of oral sex is cunnilingus.

And, when enjoying cunnilingus, women like the tongue to move around a bit. Top-to-bottom, side-to-side, circles, that sort of thing. So I have heard.

Hope that helps.

I am Laslo.

traditionalguy said...

The logo for the Hildabeast looks more like a blivet than an H.

All I ever get from Hillary is that she is angry at people and is planning her revenge.

Bob Boyd said...

Meade said...
"pre-apologize" sounds a little "priapic"

Priapism means never having to say you're sorry.

Laslo Spatula said...

"And, when enjoying cunnilingus, women like the tongue to move around a bit. Top-to-bottom, side-to-side, circles, that sort of thing. So I have heard."

This was a joke revolving around the idea that Hillary is not very spontaneous, so her cunnilingus skills are probably pretty limited in repretoire:on her dinner plate she probably doesn't like the peas and carrots to touch.

I am Laslo.

Laslo Spatula said...

"on her dinner plate she probably doesn't like the peas and carrots to touch."

I let others figure that one out.

I am Laslo.

Big Mike said...

The arrow points right. It's meant as a subtle suggestion that she will move more to the center if elected. (But no one believes it.)

Or perhaps it's an even more subtle suggestion for red states to get the heck out?

Big Mike said...

But it's nice to see that Mad Magazine hasn't lost its touch.

MadisonMan said...

Hillary Clinton, turn right. Isn't that what the logo means?

Ignorance is Bliss said...

An arrow to signify moving forward!

Swiping right is the tinder gesture to indicate that you are interested in someone; swiping left says you'll pass.

Hillary is one of the cool kids; she's just looking for a hook-up.

exhelodrvr1 said...

SHe's moving the country to the right!

exhelodrvr1 said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Patrick said...

At least FedEx was clever about it.

SeanF said...

Can someone with editing abilities at Wikipedia close the parenthesis in the paragraph Althouse copy-and-pasted? It's bugging me.

Insufficiently Sensitive said...

An arrow to signify moving forward!

Not quite 'forward'. That arrow points right. As the first 'female' president, Hillary is planning to reverse Obama's run-center and govern-left trick. She'll run-progressive and govern-right, abolishing the IRS, the FCC and 40 percent of all Executive-branch government employees, leading Congress in a steady reduction of entitlements, and restoring the US military to more-than-oriental splendor.

THAT will make the history books.

clint said...

A blue 'H' makes me think "Hospital" -- but I see that's usually a white 'H' on a blue background.

The red arrow to the right is strange.

Perhaps it's subtly meant to suggest that "blue state" Americans are standing firm in the center while "red state" Americans keep moving farther and farther to the right?

The right-pointed triangular arrow head could be a subtle echo of the Puerto Rican flag -- is this meant to signal something different to the Hispanic community than to everyone else?

Or it could just be ugly.

I still think she's phoning it in, to rake in the Clinton Foundation megabucks. No way her health doesn't become a serious issue if she runs.

Anonymous said...

Jim Treacher: "This isn't @HillaryClinton's campaign logo. She just left her blinker on."

Jay Vogt said...

The announcement video was warm and simple and easy to swallow. The road trip and Chipotle stop are fine and appropriate in pace and intensity - think spring training baseball.

The logo though is a head scratcher. It seems amateurish and more importantly anachronistic. It's as though the designer had heard about the "helvetica movement", but never actually seen it in professional application. Maybe like listening to Mad Men but not seeing the video.

My guess is that they were going for a mid-century modern / hipster vibe, but the whole thing fell apart in a conference room presentation .

the wolf said...

A simple dollar sign would have been more accurate

Fred Drinkwater said...

Not to pour cold water on all this fun Clinton-bashing, but it's just possible the logo will turn out to be a good one.
Back in the 90s, Adobe spent cubic dollars to come up with a new logo, to replace the original, elegant teal-colored "ADOBE". The new logo (the red "A") was presented at an all-hands meeting to much fanfare, and was greeted by stunned silence. I remember thinking that it reminded me of nothing so much as the old Winston cigarettes packaging. Afterward, the sense of the employees seemed to be that it was awful.
But. I forgot one little thing - Adobe was then moving into packaged software, and needed something that would catch the eye on the shelf at Fry's Electronics. In that environment, it was fantastic. On the web, with Acrobat Reader all over the place, it worked well also.
So don't be too quick to judge Clinton's design.

Sebastian said...

Y'all are being too harsh on an old lady. Shame.

For once, she's trying to be honest, and this is her reward?

The logo is right: she does want to move to the right (compared to Barry, anyway).

And the logo fits: "the most cliché logo element possible" for the most cliché candidate.

Jay Vogt said...

Honestly, why didn't she just hire out somebody from Jonathan Ive's shop or for that matter Jonathan himself? I'm sure it would have been perfect, timely and probably free. They would have thrown in an app to boot.

Known Unknown said...

Well, while red and blue are certainly the 'correct' patriotic colors, they don't work too well against one another. They each share the same color value (so, if you turned the logo into a greyscale version, the difference between the H and the arrow would be negligible). Royal blue and the bright red also tend to vibrate (cue Laslo) when placed together, and are not too harmonious for the eyes.

A darker shade of blue would a bit more pleasant to view.

Anonymous said...

She probably paid someone a few million dollars for that logo, too.

Anonymous said...

I'm going to modify, slightly, my Chipotle theory based on this logo.

Not only is she not really running for President, but she is laundering her presidential funds.

She made the logo herself and then charged her Presidential campaign $10,000,000 for it.

dbp said...

People keep saying the arrow is pointing to the right. This is incorrect. Remember that for Hillary! everything is all about Hillary! She is standing (metaphorically) behind the H. The arrow is going to the left from her perspective. Also, forward. Naturally, since that is how the left sees things.

Alex said...

Yes we can!

mikee said...

Hillary!

From the perspective of the H, the H is moving to the left, following the arrow, which tells the viewer all one needs to know about the politics of the H.

Why not just put a red star on her hat, and a hammer & sickle lapel pin on her pantsuit, and be done with it?

Sigivald said...

Forward!

Mike (MJB Wolf) said...

From a modern marketing perspective her logo pretty much sucks. Blocky and clumsy (at least that identifies with the product!) with the trite red & blue color scheme that stale thinking and lockstep politics beget. She wants to replicate the oh-so-hip O that BHO used as a logo. (He was the first, they say.) But distilling her Hillary! brand down to one initial is just dumb. Derivative. Despite the Fed-Ex arrow ham-handedly slapped on the big blue H it has none of the dynamism that the O had. It's like they recycled pieces of other logos and this is what it kinda looked like so, let's go with the Harrow Logo!

As America's Politico will tell us though, none of this matters. She could use Mr. Hand from either Southpark or The Mr. Bill Show as her logo and 45% would reflexively vote for her.

Kirk Parker said...

Laslo, you're slipping! " peas and carrots", really? Try onion rings and carrots.

Bilwick said...

Goodbye to Monica--hello, Houma! Blowjobs in the White House to be replaced with carpet-munching! Hi-yo!

jr565 said...

is the arrow in logo moving forward or sideways?

jr565 said...

Or is the arrow moving to the right? As in shes moving towards the center. I like how moving forward is moving rightward, not leftward.
Going left would equate to going back. Yes, exactly.

Chef Mojo said...

The arrow is a jet airliner plowing through the World Trade Center Towers on 9/11?

Like commenters are saying, this insipid logo is open to all sorts of interpretations, all off them bad.

Weirdness.

JackOfClubs said...

How long before the "I'm with Stupid" T-shirts come out?

George M. Spencer said...

Great logo.

Arrow points right as if to indicate she'll take the country in that direction, metaphysically and politically. Plus, vertical bars are blue indicating stability.

cold pizza said...

Fits neatly within a square (for easy carrying, I assume), except for that little prick sticking out on the side. sHrillary! is the square. That prick must be Bill. -CP

dbp said...

One could think of the vertical blue bars representing the prison cell which Hillary! can avoid for (at least) 8 years if she wins the presidency.

Also, "the colors blue and read" has been bugging me all day. I was hoping it would be caught by now since I don't like to be the spelling NAZI around here--especially when my English no good.

Ann Althouse said...

There. I fixed the typo for you.

Bay Area Guy said...

Funny!

Loved Mad Magazine ages 11-13, then upgraded to National Lampoon thereafter.

Here's the problem with Hillary: if we are to treat her no different than a man (the modern feminist mandate) then I would say, the candidate is old. Tired, wrinkly, cranky, crotchety, just plain old. "Get off my lawn, you kids!" - old. Clint Eastwood in "Grand Torino" - old. Her vibe is pure old schoolteacher scold. She has not aged well. Humorless old, scold.

cold pizza said...

The first person who does a Benny Hill-ary! mashup is going to win the internet. Cue the music...

Also, I'd nickname the van "Scooby-Don't." -CP

dbp said...

Thanks Althouse!

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