90-Day “Most Ostracized Writer” Update
Well, it’s been 3 months since I started this here blog, so it’s probably time to revisit the topic of whether or not I am actually entitled to use the moniker “MAD’s Most Ostracized Writer.” When I last posted about it, the first week or so, my main evidence for The Ostracization was the complete silent treatment from all the MAD Editors — leading to suggestions from some commenters (“sock puppet” or otherwise) that the idea I was being ostracized was a figment of my imagination or a phony controversy pumped up out of nothing just to drive eyeballs to this site. (Man, it’s a tough Internet out there!). So let me bring you up to date with everything on the “persona non grata front,” and what makes me suspect they might be giving me the permanent cold shoulder:
- The Silent Treatment continues; since my emails informing all the MAD editors about this site 3 months ago, I still haven’t heard a single thing from them. (Which, come to think of it, is almost indistinguishable from the preceding several years of trying to write for them! BTW, fellas: I’m still awaiting word from you on at least 2 scripts from over 4 years ago. [The first sentence in parentheses is an exaggeration; the second is not.])
- My complementary advance copies of every issue of MAD, regularly mailed to me by the editorial offices since the early 1980s, suddenly stopped after the appearance of this blog. (So, now I’m having to do something I haven’t done in over a quarter century — gasp! — actually BUY my own MADs! I hope they appreciate my financial support!)
- An entire comment-thread about me and this site just up and disappeared from MAD’s own message boards at madmag.com. What are the odds? (They acknowledge that it’s totally gone, but deny having anything to do with it. So, let’s wish them good luck on their O.J. Simpson-like search for “the real censors!”)
- Second-hand accounts of what the editors have actually said and done, RE: me & this blog — which I can’t be more specific about without tipping off the identities my sources, who still have to work with/for them. (Sorry if this seems like a “weasel-out” — but in my mind, these accounts leave NO doubt whatsoever, even absent the other things above.)
So, there it is. Unless somebody can come up with a benign explanation for the totality of the above…or another member of the Usual Gang finds a way to get The Boys even more riled up at them…then I’m sticking with my “Most Ostracized Writer!” It’s mine. I earned it. I’m keeping it.
UPDATE 9/16/08: In addition to the 4 things listed above, in the Fundalini section of MAD #494, they have a new installment of “my” long-running feature, “Celebrity Cause-of-Death Betting Odds” written by someone else (I’m guessing one of the editors). Now, they’re legally entitled to do that — they buy ALL rights to everything! — but there’s always been an unspoken (and unbroken, until now) MAD Rule that whoever originates a premise or concept gets “first dibs” on writing all future episodes of that concept. So, at least part of their running a new installment of “my” feature, not written by me, at this particular time…is their sending me a little passive-aggressive “message.” (Either that, or they imagine they’ve driven me to gnashing my teeth and calling a lawyer over the “lost” $150.00 micro-fee they’re paying for those tiny Fundalini pieces!) Regardless of which it is…it still counts as “Ostracization”…so I’m finally having the business cards printed up, dang it!