Shortly after Nelson Rockefeller’s death in 1979, National Lampoon published a comic in which he experienced his fatal heart attack, and then told the story of his life in flashback before dying.
I’m trying to find what issue this comic appeared in. Anyone know?
Feb. 1980
V.2, no. 19
Thank you very much!
PS: You’re not going to believe this, but I searched all the 1979 issues, and Jan. 1980 before giving up and posting here!
Never fails. It’s always in the last place you think of looking.
I found it by typing “Natlamp Nelson Rockefeller” in the Google search box.
Now I’m wondering why those running National Lampoon at the time, found Nelson Rockefeller to be worthy of so much effort. (I mean, I know he was VP, but…)
He was the recently dead VP.
It may have been NL who coined the phrase “Marshacking” after Megan Marshack, the young woman Rocky was with when he died.
He was VP during momentous times, and he died in a salcious manner. And he was a Rockefeller.
That’s very shrewd. I tried several variations and didn’t find anything. Kudos.
S/B salacious, of course
They were predominantly northeasterners and Rockefeller was Governor of New York for most of their formative years.
Indeed. He was elected to that position four times, ran for the Republican nomination for the presidency three times, and served in several senior roles as a Presidential appointee in the federal government. Plus, for a Republican in that era, he was fairly liberal (pro-civil rights, pro-environment, pro-choice).
He became kind of a footnote and punchline after he died, mostly for being the non-elected VP to a non-elected president, and the circumstances of his death, but at that time, he was very well-known, and a pretty big deal in politics.
This (along with the tabloid-ready death) does seem convincing as a likely reason.
How sad for any public figure to be remembered mainly for being lampooned by a satirical publication! (And also the tabloid-death thing.)
Even better, I remember him for giving a group of jeerers the “Rockefeller salute” (the finger).
I remember seeing that picture on Weekend Update.
Chevy Chase led into it, “Coming up, Rocky flips the bird”.
I thought it was fake. Back then, the press didn’t show things like that.
I know, it was really shocking back then.