National Lampoon
July 1971
It's July, 1971, and the top single on the Billboard Hot 100 is 'It's Too Late' from Carole King, whose album Tapestry was the biggest-selling record of all time, until displaced later in the decade by the soundtrack to Saturday Night Fever. The latest issue of National Lampoon is on the stands and it's a 'pornography' themed issue, loaded with transgressive content.
The nostalgia craze of the 1970s is under way and with it, advertisements for pop culture artifacts from the prewar era, like a compilation of 'Buck Rogers' comics. I remember reading this book, back in the day.
The Letters pages are their usual snide selves.......particularly the 'Helen Keller' joke.The 'Hot Flashes' section takes aim at High Hefner, and the Pope, quite a combination of insultees.A parody of the erotic novel My Secret Life takes aim at the hapless David Eisenhower, grandson of Dwight D. Eisenhower. David married Julie Nixon in 1968, an event that earned him the derision of the counterculture (which included the Lampoon staff, of course). It didn't help matters that when Eisenhower's student deferment ended he sidestepped the draft, and the potential to be sent to Vietnam, by enrolling in the Navy reserve, where he served for three years as an officer. The extremely popular book Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex, by David Rubin, is satirized.A cartoon takes aim at Flying Nuns:Then we have a full-color portfolio, titled 'Groupies for Everyone', which provides what every red-blooded American male wanted from the National Lampoon: boobies !
A Foto Funnies features editor Doug Kenney.The cartoon titled 'A True Story: The Two Paths' reworks the theme of the Good Girl and the Bad Girl in a clever and subversive manner:There is another transgressive cartoon:
Chris Miller's story 'Caked Joy Rag' features a brilliant, if grotesque, illustration by Roy Carruthers:A questionnaire piece, titled 'Are You A Homo ?', probably would not pass editorial muster in any magazine nowadays.........The issue closes with 'Nancy Reagan's Guide to Dating Do's and Don'ts', in which a motherly Nancy instructs excitable teens to practice restraint, and Save it for Marriage !And there it is, snide humor from July of 1971.
