MAD magazine skewers Trumpcare with Al Jaffee ‘fold-in’
Al Jaffee, at age 96, has a few words for Donald Trump about how the president is handling health care. A few pictures, too.
Jaffee is not only the longest-working cartoonist in comics history, as recognized last year by Guinness World Records, but the MAD magazine legend is also the father of the “fold-in,” the publication’s back-page feature that reveals a surprise message and image once the illustration’s middle section is collapsed.
And now, MAD will publish Jaffee’s latest fold-in, in which the cartoonist asks: “Who stands to benefit most from Trumpcare?”
Jaffee then offers his answer, which reflects reports that tens of millions of American will lose their health coverage if the government repeals and replaces the Affordable Care Act, which Congress continues to debate.
His pointed verdict is viewed when you fold in the sides.
“The fold-in is a sort of bait-andswitch process,” Jaffee tells the Washington Post. “The full-page scene asks and illustrates a ques- tion. After the page is folded, a surprise new scene and answer appear.
“In that way,” he continues, “it’s not very different from what the Republicans did during the last election with the health-care plan.”
For part of his childhood, Jaffee grew up poor on a shtetl in Zarasai — “the Siberia of Lithuania” — and those years fostered his distrust of adult authority.
Jaffee began satirizing political candidates in MAD’s pages in the ’60s, and his fold-ins have appeared in nearly every issue since 1964.
MAD’s editor in chief, John Ficarra, relishes that Jaffee’s art still delivers acidic satire.
“Al has written and illustrated almost 500 fold-ins for MAD,” Ficarra says, “and he never stops surprising us.”
The new MAD issue hits newsstands Aug. 8.