P.J. O’ROURKE: HOW I KILLED NATIONAL LAMPOON:

What was so much fun about the original National Lampoon’s Vacation was its maniacal expression of the love-and-hate relationship between weird hip sensibilities (Hughes) and even weirder normal middle-class values (Clark Griswold).

That kind of fun can’t be had in the 21st century, where there are no normal middle-class values, all the Clark Griswolds are alienated, sarcastic and cynical, and every suburban schlub is a font of nihilism’s dark, ironic genius.

Early National Lampoon writer and onetime Michael O’Donoghue paramour Anne Beatts (who created the legendary mock VW ad with a Beetle floating in water and the text, “If Ted Kennedy drove a Volkswagen, he’d be President today,”) was quoted as saying, “You can only be avant-garde for so long before you become garde.” The reverse is true as well — when did the intersection occur when, as O’Rourke wrote above “every suburban schlub” began to fancy himself “a font of nihilism’s dark, ironic genius,” and National Lampoon lost its edge? And what caused it?