horse- sh*t

by Art Chantry ( art@artchantry.com)

this ad really disturbed me. it’s an ad from a 1973 issue of national lampoon. when i first saw it, i assumed it was a typical nat’l lampoon joke ad. but, as time went on and the ad kept appearing, i slowly began to realize it was a REAL ad.

all my friends saw it, too. we all thought it was darkly funny, maybe the most outrageous humor we’d ever encountered. remember, this was back in 72-73. i graduated from high school in 1972. we were young and the times were darkly threatening, but not cynically morbid – yet. getting drafted into vietnam was still factor as i graduated. i missed having to report for my draft physical by a month when they ended the lottery.

AC:we live in a world where there is no real honest copyright protection unless you have the enormous amount of resources needed to pursue the violators. that's the biggest reason why the laws are being written - to protect corporations. they really don't protect us little guys at all. but, the politicos and the corporate dogs a have all spun us into believing they're protecting "us". big laffs...

so, seeing a death joke as awful as this rang differently back then. but, it still rings with a loud clarity of extremely nasty today. except, that an ad like this might play in a little more moderately attuned spotlight than back then. i doubt most gun fetishists would find much ‘disturbing’ about this humor. and there is no way the mighty NRA would ever NOT defend it. so, go figger. what was once shocking is now moderate. so, what else is new? and yet, the crazies worry about the homos and the pinkos becoming ‘mainstream’. what about this shit?

this ad is actually promoting a MAGAZINE! even worse (although i always thought the mag was called “gutslammer”. all my friends referred to it as ‘the gutslammer ad.”) in reality, the magazine is called “HORSESHIT, The Offensive Journal.” yes, it seems to have lived up to it’s pretensions.

has anybody ever actually seen a copy of this magazine? i sure haven’t. this ad ran for years int he pages of lampoon. yet, nobody i’ve ever met evert subscribed to it, or even encountered a copy of it. sort of says something about it’s confusing (“gutslammer”) ad campaign. this one should have been a KILLER sales ad. but, it didn’t work.

when you look it up online, it’s equally obscure. you can barely find a mention of it. there seems to be a much later magazine called “psychdelic horseshit” (apparently british) that has many many hits on google. but this “horeshit” magazine (who would ever guess there were TWO magazines called “horseshit”?) is almost impossible to find out anything about.

this advert actually reproduces the cover art of the first issue. no surprise. there seems to have been only about 4 issues of the magazine ever published.

there is a complete reproduction of an entire issue on one website. it seems to have mostly been rather wonderful illustrations that had mostly to do with politics and (lotsa) sex. some actual writing seems to have been done for the magazine as well, but i can find little to go on as to who contributed either as writers or as illustrators. the fine work on the images suggest some feldgling talents we may now become familar as their careers expanded. it seems to have actually been published in the late 60’s and these ads only sold back issues.

but, who kn

anybody out there ever seen an issue of “Horseshit: The Offensive Journal”?

ADDENDUM:

AC:actually – i don’t really see the connection between “answer me” and “horseshit”. i think they both have very strong, but rather different philosophies. the sixties was definitely not he 80’s. we all can’t think that 60’s way any more that they could even imaging how we think….i’m pretty sure that a young dick cheney posed for that drawing….go read jim goad’s book “the redneck manifesto”. i found that fascinating….

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