The best satire always hurts a bit; for the reader and the writer. -- ThaMothership
I keep seeing a common refrain in the comments to my posts: “You forgot the snark tag.”
No, I didn’t. Why would I use that? It makes no sense to me. I admit that I have not been an active part of this community for long, but one would think I’d have learned my lesson by now if there were one worth learning.
Other common refrains submitted in the comments to my posts:
• “These diaries don’t belong in a serious political forum.”
• “Posts like these lead to misleading information.”
After countless hours of self-reflection and pondering the nature of political expression, I offer the following reasoned and nuanced response:
BULLSHIT.
You may be right to question the quality of my posts. That’s fair.
But humor and satire in general? The kind of humor that doesn’t come prepackaged with a warning label and instruction manual? Those are VERY needed here, and everywhere else intelligent people meet to discuss the issues of the day.
WHY DO WE NEED TO TAG A JOKE?
Kind of seems to miss the entire fucking point, right? There are two key issues here: Humor, and personal responsibility.
Let’s start with humor: Better and smarter folks have tried -- and failed -- to define humor and what is and is not funny, so I’m certainly not going to try. I think we can agree, though, that there is often humor in pointing out absurdity. Often the best way to illustrate that absurdity is to push the absurd concept even farther, to be even more absurder…der.
For example, when I wanted to make fun of Washington pharmacists for refusing to sell Plan B on religious grounds, I could have written a scholarly tome about religious freedom, medical ethics, or the resulting court case.
Fuck that. I wrote this instead.
When I wanted to make fun of corporations for trying to convince us that High Fructose Corn Syrup is "corn sugar", I could have written a dissertation on the use of labels in advertising.
Fuck that. I wrote this instead.
When I wanted to make fun of the Tea Party, well, they pretty much do a great job of that themselves.
Nonetheless, I wrote this instead.
Would these posts have made a stronger point if they came with warning labels? Jeepers, I don’t know…is a show funnier if it has a laugh track?
Moving on to personal responsibility, I admit that when a hoax has no obvious clues, it can take some time and effort on your part to debunk it. I sympathize. Not a lot though. The bigger part of me is saying, so fucking what?
Whose job is it to check your sources? Whose job is it to be skeptical and ask questions, so as to avoid being led astray and misinformed?
And that’s just for the subtle hoaxes! For those of you who don’t catch the really obvious clues, I have zero sympathy. I mean seriously, what does it say about you that you don’t stop for two seconds to ask whether the names “Stuart Pidhick” and “May Dupname” were real people? (Maybe their Hawaiian birth certificates are fakes!)
My intention with these humorous hoaxes is to make you laugh. But what about posts from those whose intentions are not so benign? Won’t birthers and other whackos feel emboldened to make shit up knowing you’ll believe every word if it’s posted here without a snark tag?
You can’t expect the opposition to include a flashing neon sign to tip you off. Or maybe YOU can. [<-- WARNING: Is this snark or sarcasm? How will we ever know if there is no flashing neon Snark-Signal??]
WHY DON’T I TAKE THE TAGS SERIOUSLY?
In the beginning, I tried to take the tags seriously and follow the guidelines. I was quickly greeted with comments about the supposed inaccuracy of my tags, and how I needed to start taking them seriously.
The message was that this is a serious political forum, and such hijinks are frowned upon. I thought to myself, I am trying to take it seriously! As far as I could tell, these folks weren’t complaining because my tags were incorrect; they were complaining because my tags weren’t correct enough to make them happy.
After reflecting on this pretentious bullshit for another 30 seconds, I said fuck it, let’s have some fun.
Thus, because of pompous comments about "taking a serious political forum seriously”, I invented a tag that sums up the issue perfectly:
stuff that is not funny and should be rejected because we are very serious political operatives who hold ourselves to a higher standard
[<-- WARNING: This tag is sarcastic.]
WHY DON’T I TAKE THIS FORUM SERIOUSLY?
Actually, I do. I really appreciate that someone has provided a venue where I can express myself.
Like many of you, I am employed in the political realm. Political jobs require us to be... well... political. (You can mail my Pulitzer c/o DailyKos…) Thus, even when you agree with your colleagues, you can’t always speak your mind.
You know how it is – we all want to get to the same destination, but I’d risk my job pointing out that this bumpy logging road might not be quite as good as the six-lane interstate. This forum provides me a safe outlet in which to say all those things, and more.
Further, not only have I included a few “serious” diaries where I felt they were warranted, but humor, to me, is VERY serious. It is equal parts toy and weapon. Humor is to rhetoric what water is to the physical world – soothing balm, great equalizer, and torrential decimator. Satire, of course, is especially suited for the political realm.
And satire is an honored legacy: John Stewart, Stephen Colbert, Ben Franklin, Mark Twain, and Will Rogers, to name just a few. Just because I’m not in their league doesn’t mean I can’t play. And practice. And improve.
I often find myself perverting Oscar Wilde (also an honored legacy, from what I hear) as follows: Satire is the only serious thing in the world. And the satirist is the only person who is never serious.
So, as you can see, I may take an issue seriously without approaching it in a serious manner. Unfortunately for our budding friendship, I refuse to take you seriously. And you shouldn’t take me seriously either.
You may be a great and wonderful person who is also a very respected and powerful SOMEBODY in the political realm. To me, you are a faceless, nameless entity who writes things I may or may not like. Fair is fair – I am a non-entity to you, as well. Offline, either of us could be a campaign consultant, head of a federal agency, or even the President himself.
Or you could be some homeless guy hitting up the free computers at the library. I know for a fact that that’s not me, but then I’m damn sure not going to do anything to prove otherwise.
For old fogeys like myself, this anonymity and lack of direct personal interaction is called being on the internet. Class dismissed. [<-- CAVEAT: I am actually Nancy Reagan's astrologer.]
IS THIS A SERIOUS FORUM FOR SERIOUS POLITICAL TOPICS?
At the exact time someone was telling me that “these kind of diaries really don't have any place on a serious political site”, I noticed that a post about the death of Donna Summers had four times the recommendations than my diary post.
I agree that her death is an unfortunate loss, but is her death a serious political issue for serious political people to discuss seriously?
Seriously? [<-- This is a serious question for the serious political operatives who post serious posts about serious issues.]