MADness #3: Election 2000!

Each Monday I’m doing an installment of a complete, chronological look at every job I did for MAD over my 20 year run for the magazine, complete with whatever stories, anecdotes, or milestones might apply and the full article. This week is a look at my third appearance in the magazine in “The MAD 20 Dumbest People, Events and Things of 2000”, once again written by my CLAPTRAP co-hort, Desmond Devlin for MAD #401, Jan 2001.

I know I just posted these images a few weeks ago post 2020 election, but I’m again I’m a completist so I’m doing these in order.

When I originally got this assignment, this was supposed to be Dumb Thing #11 in that issue. The 2000 election took place on Nov 7th, 2000 and MAD was supposed to go to press on Nov 8th. In anticipation of this, the editors had Des and I do two versions of this piece, one showing Democratic candidate Al Gore winning, and one showing Republican candidate George W. Bush winning, and moved it to #1 in the list. The idea was that whoever was projected the winner on the 8th, they’d insert that page in and deliver to the printer.

No one won the election on the 8th, or 9th, or…

MAD delivered both pages to the printer and had them delay going to press on that section of the magazine until it became obvious the election was not going to be called for a while. Then they decided to print half the copies with the Gore winning page, and half with the Bush winning page and changed the copy appropriately, thereby turning issue #401 into a collector’s item!

These two pages were my first full page, full color work for MAD.

My next assignment for MAD was the one I was really waiting for, a full movie/TV parody! Toon in next week for that!