WHAT'S MY SHINE?

WHAT'S MY LINE?
CBS 1950-1967

WHAT'S MY SHINE?
MAD #17, November 1954
w: Harvey Kurtzman
a: Jack Davis

Quick history lessons (groan!): Those old enough to remember fifties nostalgia (nostalgia for it, not the fifties themselves) think it was all Grease and Happy Days or Back to the Future. Those I've talked to that lived through the actual fifties remember it slightly differently, always in fear of being bombed at any moment, no diversity or conformity, and particularly the red scare.

White nationalists making up the majority of the Republican party may be bad, but it's not much worse than before. We've always had zealous bigots and disengenuous patriots in congress. What we didn't have is opinions influenced by 24-hour partisan news channels. The Trump of his time was Senator Joseph McCarthy, a demagogue of the sort previously mentioned, able to get away with his reign only because we didn't have fact-checking in real time. Hollywood and the Blacklist has been chronicled in many places, but the subcommittee also had its sites on accusing Communists (Reds) of infiltrating the military as well. There was also nothing like C-Span, there were just the three networks, so the Army-McCarthy hearings pre-empted regularly scheduled programming.

This MAD article was the first of many pre-cable articles to satirize talking heads using the premise that things like this should compete with the rest of TV to make it more exciting. In this case, What's My Line?, where the premise was that three or four blindfolded panelists asked questions to a guest about his or her occupation and were awarded points for correct answers. Here instead of host John Daly, it is moderated by Army-McCarthy special counsel Ray Jenkins.

The Subcommittee included Everett Dirksen (R-IL), Henry Dworshak (R-ID), Charles Potter (R-MI), John McClellan (D-AR), Stuart Symington (D-MI), Henry “Scoop” Jackson (D-WA), and Joseph McCarthy (R-WI).

Robert Stevens was an Army Secretary that was a witness in the hearings and a photograph of him submitted by McCarthy was found to be doctored. Karl Mundt was chairman of the subcommittee.

McCarthy's lawyer was Roy Cohn is caricatured. He was also one of Trump's lawyers a generation later.

Private Schein was also a witness in the hearings. There was no equivalent to Lana Cheesecake in either the hearings or the quiz show, it was just a commentary on the optics of television.

WHAT'S MY CRIME?
Eh! #4, June 1954
a: Dick Ayers

From MAD's TV “Alfie” Awards by Larry Siegel and Mort Drucker in MAD #56, July 1960. The other panelists are Arlene Francis, Bennett Cerf, and Dorothy Kilgallen.

MAD VISITS THE WORLD'S GREATEST TV PANELIST
MAD #62, April 1961
w: Larry Siegel
a: Mort Drucker

The interviewer is Ed Murrow. MAD writer Dick DeBartolo was simultaneously a writer for Goodson-Todman and sometimes used a pen name writing parodies of shows they produced.

WHAT'S MY LINE?
Sick #9, November 1961
artist unknown

WHAT'S MY SALARY?
Sick #21, June 1963
artist unknown

The last panel has Fred Gwynne and Joe E. Ross from Car 54, Where Are You ? for some reason. Probably because they were popular then.