Cover scan by Dan Rivera. © NL Communications, Inc.
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There were a lot of things we didn't like about National Lampoon in
the early 70's (this was before the movie National Lampoon's Animal House had been
released) - its frequent lapses in taste and obvious left-wing bent, for
example - but it made up for some of them with this September '75 "Back to College" issue.
The wonderful painted cover is very funny (always a plus in a humor magazine), where we see a coed
evidently complying with the "F - See Me" instruction her professor had written on her assignment,
only to find herself over his knee getting spanked (panties down!) with a slide rule. For the
benefit of those who are too young to remember 1975, the slide rule was a computational aid used
before digital calculators became affordable two or three years later.
We were certainly excited to see this cover, and although we considered it pretty risque
at the time, in fact the Lampoon's excessive smuttiness was in the process of being reigned
in by its then-youthful and unknown editor, P.J. O'Rourke. O'Rourke went on to become a very
well-known, politically conservative humorist, authoring numerous books and articles. We remember
the 100th anniversary issue a few years later, containing a cover gallery which reproduced the
spanking cover and added the comment that "conscientious P.J. supervised every second of
modeling." Who can blame him?
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