“I think a lot of people think written comedy is dead,” says Limm, getting back on subject. “And, y’know, it’s sorta, it’s getting there.” Says Moerder, resignedly: “I think a lot of people would rather see a YouTube video of a dog vomiting than read our stuff online.”
Until just recently, the Lampoon’s Internet presence was all but nonexistent. Only this year have they thrown up a couple of sporadically updated blogs, and put an entire issue up for PDF download, along with excerpts from back issues. “We’ve just discovered this Internet thing like four months ago,” jokes Moerder. “It’s been working pretty well.”
Andy Borowitz says the mag’s paltry online presence may be a mistake. “I think it’s lost some of its relevance, largely because it doesn’t have a Web site that’s competitive with those bigger operations,” he says. “I don’t know if it’s possible for them to play in that league.”
But John Aboud says the opposite might also be true. “The great thing about the magazine is that it exists outside of the marketplace. Because it’s financially independent, it can reinvent itself with each new class of staffers. I like the fact that it can be a venue for conceptual humor or ‘art humor’ that most of America will hate. It really has nothing in common with The Onion or CollegeHumor.com or Modern Humorist because it has no need to be relevant or timely.” At the same time, he says, “it seems like some of the MySpace generation is now getting on staff; I saw that they re-launched HarvardLampoon.com to be more like a blog. It will be interesting to see if the current Lampoon staffers bring that weird, conceptual aesthetic to the Web or if the Web aesthetic takes over the magazine.”
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And the women?
The Lampoon has been criticized for more than being unfunny, or slow to respond to technological innovation. You may have noticed every person quoted in this article so far has a Y chromosome. In truth, this is partially misleading. The club went co-ed in the early ’70s, and while I met only one Lampoon woman, senior Claire Friedman, there are several listed on the masthead of the most recent issue, and members says the club these days is “the most even we’ve ever been.”
One blogger last year lambasted the Lampoon for its seat at “the exclusive college of the white power structure,” charging them with “being wiseass without being incisive; they bite but they don’t break the flesh. After all, you really don’t want to attack The Man if you’re predestined to be The Man yourself.” And it’s true; seldom do any Lampoon pieces really go for the jugular. Most are content with light satire, absurdism, or silliness.
Even former members are able to admit that the castle can sometimes seem a bastion of white-male privilege. Al Jean, who says finding his niche at the Lampoon “really made my college experience,” has nonetheless been unafraid to skewer Harvard hauteur on The Simpsons. He remembers one episode in particular. “There was a depiction of the writers of the Itchy & Scratchy cartoon. The head of the studio says, “Y’know why you eggheads can’t write, it’s because you don’t have any life experience!” And one of the writers goes, ‘At Harvard, I majored in life experience.’ Then the guy throws a coffee pot at him and fires him.”
“We’re not very well-adjusted socially, if you can imagine,” says Pearson. “I’m married to my work.”
“And some day we’ll be married to, uh, real women,” says Limm. “Hopefully.”
What, the allure of the Lampoon cachet doesn’t have campus coeds flocking? “The only party I went to, I was in a gorilla suit, and a girl started dancing with me,” says Pearson. “Other than that, I stay here.”
And why not? Theirs is an exclusive club, with some pretty cool perks: Elijah Wood dropping by for a boozy private dinner, say, or regular visits from the cast of Saturday Night Live. (No one seems to think the new season is very funny. “SNL comes every year, and we usually don’t know who they are because we don’t watch the show,” says Berkman. “Then they drink all our alcohol,” says Sachs. “And steal our three women,” says Limm.)
No doubt, it’s rarefied company. “We would get very offended when people said we were just an exclusive social club,” says Aboud. “Then, to make ourselves feel better, we’d throw ourselves a party and not invite those people.”
All the same, says, Moerder, “We like to think it’s one of the last remaining meritocracies at Harvard. It’s not like a social thing at all. We don’t care who you are, or who you know, it’s just how good your stuff is.”
“You had to submit several pieces over the course of a semester,” Borowitz remembers. “In the best-case scenario someone was elected based on the pieces. Women in those days were sometimes elected if they were cute (a peril of a nearly all-male, all-virgin electorate).” Was there any required hip quotient in those days? “If hipness had been required, the membership would have numbered zero.”