Al Jaffee, Mad magazine’s award-winning cartoonist and ageless wise guy who delighted millions of kids with the sneaky fun of the Fold-In and the snark of “Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions,” has died. He was 102. 

Jaffee died Monday in Manhattan from multiple organ failure, according to his granddaughter, Fani Thomson. He had retired at the age of 99. 

Mad magazine, with its wry, sometimes pointed send-ups of politics and culture, was essential reading for teens and preteens during the baby-boom era and inspiration for countless future comedians. Few of the magazine’s self-billed “Usual Gang of Idiots” contributed as much — and as dependably — as the impish, bearded cartoonist. For decades, virtually every issue featured new material by Jaffee. His collected “Fold-Ins,” taking on everyone in his unmistakably broad visual style from the Beatles to TMZ, was enough for a four-volume box set published in 2011. 

Readers savored his Fold-Ins like dessert, turning to them on the inside back cover after looking through such other favorites as Antonio Prohías’ “Spy vs. Spy” and Dave Berg’s “The Lighter Side.” The premise, originally a spoof of the old Sports Illustrated and Playboy magazine foldouts, was that you started with a full-page drawing and question on top, folded two designated points toward the middle and produced a new and surprising image, along with the answer. 

The Fold-In was supposed to be a onetime gag, tried out in 1964 when Jaffee satirized the biggest celebrity news of the time: Elizabeth Taylor dumping her husband, Eddie Fisher, in favor of “Cleopatra” co-star Richard Burton. Jaffee first showed Taylor and Burton arm in arm on one side of the picture, and on the opposite side a young, handsome man being held back by a policeman. 

Fold the picture in and Taylor and the young man are kissing. 

The idea was so popular that Mad editor Al Feldstein wanted a follow-up. Jaffee devised a picture of 1964 GOP presidential contenders Nelson Rockefeller and Barry Goldwater that, when collapsed, became an image of Richard Nixon. 

“That one really set the tone for what the cleverness of the Fold-Ins has to be,” Jaffee told the Boston Phoenix in 2010. “It couldn’t just be bringing someone from the left to kiss someone on the right.” 

Jaffee was also known for “Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions,” which delivered exactly what the title promised. A comic from 1980 showed a man on a fishing boat with a noticeably bent reel. “Are you going to reel in the fish?” his wife asks. “No,” he says, “I’m going to jump into the water and marry the gorgeous thing.” 

Jaffee didn’t just satirize the culture; he helped change it. His parodies of advertisements included such future real-life products as automatic redialing for a telephone, a computer spell checker and graffiti-proof surfaces. He also anticipated peelable stamps, multiblade razors and self-extinguishing cigarettes. 

Jaffee’s admirers ranged from Charles M. Schulz of “Peanuts” fame and “Far Side” creator Gary Larson to Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, who marked Jaffee’s 85th birthday by featuring a Fold-In cake on “The Colbert Report.” When Stewart and “The Daily Show” writers put together the best-selling “America (The Book),” they asked Jaffee to contribute a Fold-In. 

“When I was done, I called up the producer who’d contacted me, and I said, ‘I’ve finished the Fold-In, where shall I send it?’ And he said — and this was a great compliment — ‘Oh, please Mr. Jaffee, could you deliver it in person? The whole crew wants to meet you,'” he told The Boston Phoenix. 

Jaffee received numerous awards and in 2013 was inducted into the Will Eisner Hall of Fame, the ceremony taking place at San Diego Comic-Con International. In 2010, he contributed illustrations to Mary-Lou Weisman’s “Al Jaffee’s Mad Life: A Biography.” The following year, Chronicle Books published “The MAD Fold-In Collection: 1964-2010.” 

Art was the saving presence of his childhood, which left him with permanent distrust of adults and authority. He was born in Savannah, Georgia, but for years was torn between the U.S., where his father (a department store manager) preferred to live, and Lithuania, where his mother (a religious Jew) longed to return. In Lithuania, Jaffee endured poverty and bullying but also developed his craft. With paper scarce and no school to attend, he learned to read and write through the comic strips mailed by his father. 

By his teens, he was settled in New York City and so obviously gifted that he was accepted into the High School of Music & Art. His schoolmates included Will Elder, a future Mad illustrator, and Harvey Kurtzmann, a future Mad editor. (His mother, meanwhile, remained in Lithuania and was apparently killed during the war). 

He had a long career before Mad. He drew for Timely Comics, which became Marvel Comics; and for several years sketched the “Tall Tales” panel for the New York Herald Tribune. Jaffee first contributed to Mad in the mid-1950s. He left when Kurtzmann quit the magazine but came back in 1964. 

Mad lost much of its readership and edge after the 1970s, and Jaffee outlived virtually all of the magazine’s stars. But he rarely lacked for ideas even as his method, drawing by hand, remained mostly unchanged in the digital era. 

“I’m so used to being involved in drawing and knowing so many people that do it, that I don’t see the magic of it,” Jaffee told the publication Graphic NYC in 2009. “If you reflect and think about it, I’m sitting down and suddenly there’s a whole big illustration of people that appears. I’m astounded when I see magicians work; even though I know they’re all tricks. You can imagine what someone thinks when they see someone drawing freehand and it’s not a trick. It’s very impressive.”
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The World Bank and International Monetary Fund’s spring meetings kick off this week with an ambitious reform and fundraising agenda likely to be overshadowed by concerns over high inflation, rising geopolitical tension and financial stability.

“Despite the remarkable resilience of consumer spending in the United States, in Europe, despite the uplift from China’s reopening, global growth would remain below 3%” in 2023, IMF managing director Kristalina Georgieva told a press conference on Monday.

The fund now expects global growth to remain at close to 3% for the next half decade — its lowest medium-term prediction since the 1990s.

Close to 90% of the world’s advanced economies will experience slowing growth this year, while Asia’s emerging markets are expected to see a substantial rise in economic output — with India and China predicted to account for half of all growth, Georgieva said last week.

Low-income countries are expected to suffer a double shock from higher borrowing costs and a decline in demand for their exports, which Georgieva said could fuel poverty and hunger.

Updated growth projections published in the IMF’s World Economic Outlook on Tuesday will provide a broader look at how different countries are coping, with additional publications to detail fiscal and financial challenges to the global economy.

The World Bank, which forecast a gloomier economic picture than the IMF earlier this year, is slightly raising its prediction for global growth in 2023, from 1.7 in January to 2%, spurred by China’s economic reopening, the bank’s president David Malpass said at a press conference on Monday.

Tackling inflation remains a priority

This year’s spring meeting will be held amid high inflation and ongoing concerns about the health of the banking sector following the dramatic collapse of Silicon Valley Bank.

Georgieva said last week that central banks should continue battling high inflation through interest-rate hikes, despite concerns that it could further inflame the banking sector.

“We don’t envisage, at this point, central banks stepping back from fighting inflation,” she told AFP in an interview.

“Central banks still have to prioritize fighting inflation and then supporting, through different instruments, financial stability,” she said.

Ahead of the spring meetings, the IMF and World Bank also called on wealthier countries to help plug a $1.6 billion hole in a concessional lending facility for low-income countries that was heavily used during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Many low-income countries are now facing mounting debt burdens due in part to the higher interest-rate environment, which is also leading to capital outflows from many of the countries most in need of investment.

“For many of the developing countries it looks like they’re in a phase of decapitalization rather than recapitalization,” Malpass said on Monday. “That’s gravely concerning.”

US pushes for World Bank reforms

Malpass and Georgieva will use this year’s spring meetings to try and make progress on stalled debt restructuring reforms.

“The goal is to share information earlier in the debt restructuring process and work toward comparable burden sharing,” Malpass said.

There will also be a meeting on Wednesday to address war-torn Ukraine’s recovery and reconstruction needs, with the World Bank estimating the country faces an “additional” $11 billion funding shortfall this year.

The spring meetings also provide an opportunity to make progress on an ambitious U.S.-backed agenda to reform the World Bank, so it is better prepared to tackle long-term issues like climate change.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told AFP she expects member states will agree to update the World Bank’s mission statement to include “building resilience against climate change, pandemics and conflict and fragility,” to its core goals.

Yellen said she also expects an agreement to “significantly” stretch the World Bank’s financial capacity, which “could result in an additional $50 billion in extra lending capacity over the next decade.”

The changes will likely fall to the bank’s next president to implement, with Malpass due to step down early from a tenure marked by concerns over his position on climate change.

He is widely expected to be replaced by U.S.-backed former Mastercard chief executive officer Ajay Banga, who was the only person nominated for the position.
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A U.S. warship sailed near a chain of islands Monday claimed by China, the Philippines, as well as other nations and Taiwan, while China held its third day of military exercises around self-governed Taiwan.

The U.S. Navy said the guided-missile destroyer USS Milius conducted a freedom of navigation operation near Mischief Reef in the Spratly Islands, a group of dozens of islands between Vietnam and the Philippines, to uphold the “lawful uses of the sea.”

“USS Milius demonstrated that Mischief Reef, a low-tide elevation in it its natural state, is not entitled to a territorial sea under international law,” the Navy said.

The Navy routinely sails near the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea to protest what it calls China’s “excessive maritime claims.”

China has created thousands of hectares of artificial islands atop reefs in the Spratlys and claimed Monday that the United States was “illegally trespassing.”

Beijing has claimed every feature in the South China Sea to restrict navigation and stop the lawful commercial activity of vessels from the Philippines and Vietnam. China, Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan, and Vietnam all claim the Spratlys as part of their territory.

“The United States upholds freedom of navigation for all nations as a principle. As long as some countries continue to claim and assert limits on rights that exceed their authority under international law, the United States will continue to defend the rights and freedoms of the sea guaranteed to all. No member of the international community should be intimidated or coerced into giving up their rights and freedoms,” the Navy said in a statement.

The operation occurred as China sent nearly a dozen warships and 70 fighter jets toward Taiwan on Monday in a third day of military drills since Taiwan’s president met with Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy in Los Angeles last week.

Taiwan’s government said it responded to China’s moves by readying its navy and land-based missile defenses.

China’s foreign ministry has sharply criticized meetings between U.S. and Taiwanese officials. The Chinese Communist Party has said it wants to gain control of Taiwan, a democratic island, by 2027 and is prepared to use force, if necessary.

The Pentagon’s assistant to the secretary of defense for public affairs, Chris Meager, told reporters Monday that Beijing should not turn the Taiwanese leader’s visit to California into a “pretext to overreact.”

He said the U.S. continues to keep open communication channels with the People’s Republic of China but so far, Beijing has declined requests for engagement with both Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley.

The USS Nimitz Carrier Strike Group and a Marine Amphibious Ready Group are currently in the region, and Meagher said they will continue to conduct routine operations there. 

“We will not be deterred from operating safely and responsibly in the seas and skies of the western Pacific, consistent with international law,” he said Monday. 
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The Iowa Attorney General’s Office has paused its practice of paying for emergency contraception — and in rare cases, abortions — for victims of sexual assault, a move that drew criticism from some victim advocates.

Federal regulations and state law require Iowa to pay many of the expenses for sexual assault victims who seek medical help, such as the costs of forensic exams and treatment for sexually transmitted infections. Under the previous attorney general, Democrat Tom Miller, Iowa’s victim compensation fund also paid for Plan B, the so-called morning after pill, as well as other treatments to prevent pregnancy.

A spokeswoman for Republican Attorney General Brenna Bird, who defeated Miller’s bid for an 11th term in November, told the Des Moines Register that those payments are now on hold as part of a review of victim services.

“As a part of her top-down, bottom-up audit of victim assistance, Attorney General Bird is carefully evaluating whether this is an appropriate use of public funds,” Bird Press Secretary Alyssa Brouillet said in a statement. “Until that review is complete, payment of these pending claims will be delayed.”

Victim advocates were caught off guard by the pause. Ruth Richardson, CEO of Planned Parenthood North Central States, said in a statement that the move was “deplorable and reprehensible.”

Bird’s decision comes as access to the most commonly used method of abortion in the U.S. plunged into uncertainty following conflicting court rulings on Friday over the legality of the abortion medication mifepristone. For now, the drug the Food and Drug Administration approved in 2000 appeared to remain at least immediately available in the wake of separate rulings issued in quick succession.

U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk in Texas, an appointee of former President Donald Trump, ordered a hold on federal approval of mifepristone. But that decision came at nearly the same time that U.S. District Judge Thomas O. Rice in Washington state, an appointee of former President Barack Obama, essentially ordered the opposite.

The extraordinary timing of the competing orders revealed the high stakes surrounding the drug nearly a year after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade and curtailed access to abortion across the country. President Joe Biden said his administration would fight the Texas ruling.

In Iowa, money for the victim compensation fund comes from fines and penalties paid by convicted criminals. For sexual assault victims, state law requires that the fund pay “the cost of a medical examination of a victim for the purpose of gathering evidence and the cost of treatment of a victim for the purpose of preventing venereal disease,” but makes no mention of contraception or pregnancy risk.

Sandi Tibbetts Murphy, who served as director of the victim assistance division under Miller, said the longtime policy for Iowa has been to include the cost of emergency contraception in the expenses covered by the fund. She said that in rare cases, the fund paid for abortions for rape victims.

“My concern is for the victims of sexual assault, who, with no real notice, are now finding themselves either unable to access needed treatment and services, or are now being forced to pay out of their own pocket for those services, when this was done at no fault of their own,” she said.
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Highly classified military and intelligence documents that appeared online, with details ranging from Ukraine’s air defenses to Israel’s Mossad spy agency, have U.S. officials scrambling to identify the leak’s source, with some Western security experts and U.S. officials saying they suspected it could be someone from the United States. 

Officials say the breadth of topics addressed in the documents, which touch on the war in Ukraine, China, the Middle East and Africa, suggest they may have been leaked by an American rather than an ally. 

“The focus now is on this being a U.S. leak, as many of the documents were only in U.S. hands,” Michael Mulroy, a former senior Pentagon official, told Reuters in an interview. 

U.S. officials said the investigation is in its early stages and those running it have not ruled out the possibility that pro-Russian elements were behind the leak, which is seen as one of the most serious security breaches since more than 700,000 documents, videos and diplomatic cables appeared on the WikiLeaks website in 2013. 

The Russian embassy in Washington and the Kremlin did not respond to requests for comment. 

Following disclosure of the leak, Reuters has reviewed more than 50 documents labeled “Secret” and “Top Secret” that first appeared last month on social media websites, beginning with Discord and 4Chan. While some of the documents were posted weeks ago, their existence was first reported on Friday by The New York Times. 

Reuters has not independently verified the authenticity of the documents. Some giving battlefield casualty estimates from Ukraine appeared to have been altered to minimize Russian losses. It is not clear why at least one is marked unclassified but includes top secret information. Some documents are marked “NOFORN,” meaning they cannot be released to foreign nationals. 

The White House referred questions to the Pentagon. 

In a statement on Sunday, the Pentagon said it was reviewing the validity of the photographed documents that “appear to contain sensitive and highly classified material.” 

The Pentagon has referred the issue to the Department of Justice, which has opened a criminal investigation. 

One of the documents, dated Feb. 23 and marked “Secret,” outlines in detail how Ukraine’s S-300 air defense systems would be depleted by May 2 at the current usage rate. 

Such closely guarded information could be of great use to Russian forces, and Ukraine said its president and top security officials met on Friday to discuss ways to prevent leaks. 

Watching allies 

Another document, marked “Top Secret” and from a CIA Intel update from March 1, says the Mossad intelligence agency was encouraging protests against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s plans to tighten controls on the Supreme Court. 

The document said the U.S. learned this through signals intelligence, suggesting the United States had been spying on one of its most important allies in the Middle East. 

In a statement on Sunday, Netanyahu’s office described the assertion as “mendacious and without any foundation whatsoever.” 

Another document gave details of internal discussions among senior South Korean officials about U.S. pressure on Seoul to help supply weapons to Ukraine, and its policy of not doing so. 

A South Korean presidential official said on Sunday the country was aware of news reports about the leaked documents and it plans to discuss “issues raised” with Washington. 

The Pentagon has not addressed the contents of any specific documents, including the apparent surveillance of allies. 

Two U.S. officials, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that while there was concern about the leak at the Pentagon and intelligence agencies, the documents showed a snapshot in time from more than a month ago, rather than more recent assessments. 

The two officials said the military and intelligence agencies were looking at their processes for how widely some of the intelligence is shared internally. 

Officials are looking at what motivations a U.S. official or a group of officials would have in leaking such sensitive information, said one of the officials who spoke to Reuters. 

The official said investigators were looking at four or five theories, from a disgruntled employee to an insider threat who actively wanted to undermine U.S. national security interests. 
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