Obit watch: July 22, 2019.

Paul Krassner, Yippee.

…so naturally irreverent was Mr. Krassner that when People magazine labeled him the “father of the underground press,” he demanded a paternity test.

Mr. Krassner was writing freelance pieces for Mad magazine in 1958 when he realized that there was no equivalent satirical publication for adults; Mad, he could see, was largely targeted at teenagers. So he started The Realist out of the Mad offices, and it began regular monthly publication. By 1967 its circulation had peaked at 100,000.
“I had no role models and no competition, just an open field mined with taboos waiting to be exploded,” Mr. Krassner wrote in his autobiography.
The magazine’s most famous cartoon was one, drawn in 1967 by the Mad artist Wally Wood, of an orgy featuring Snow White, Donald Duck and a bevy of Disney characters enjoying a variety of sexual positions. (Mickey Mouse is shown shooting heroin.) Later, digitally colored by a former Disney artist, it became a hot-selling poster that supplied Mr. Krassner with modest royalties into old age.

Robert M. Morgenthau, former Manhattan DA and federal prosecutor.

Noted:

Mr. Morgenthau had been in the Naval Reserve in college, and after graduation he went on active duty as an ensign. He passed his physical exam by concealing the near-deafness in his right ear from a boyhood mastoid infection. An officer aboard three destroyers and a minesweeper during World War II, he survived enemy attacks and won decorations for bravery under fire.
His destroyer, the U.S.S. Lansdale, was attacked by Nazi torpedo bombers in the Mediterranean off Algiers on April 20, 1944. Cut by explosions, the ship went down with a heavy loss of life. Lieutenant Morgenthau, the executive officer, saved several shipmates, leapt into the water and swam for three hours in the darkness until he and others were picked up by an American warship. In 1945 his ship, the U.S.S. Harry F. Bauer, was hit by a Japanese kamikaze plane off Iwo Jima, but its 550-pound bomb did not explode.

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