Is it Time for a Parody/Satire Detection Tool?
There are a lot of fakers on the Internet. Sometimes they are fraudulent and sometimes they are just funny.
I have read my share of satirical right wing blogs and I am sometimes left wondering about the true leanings of the authors. Being steadfast and exacting in a fake point of view is quite manageable in print when you only have to write a few hundred words every few days. I have wondered what the point was to some blogs that are astoundingly extreme in their professed views. They don’t seem to shed the necessary light on the incorrectness of their arguments. Sometimes I am lead to conclude that they are like ugly inarticulate Anne Coulter clones. They are happy to promote intolerant, immoral, world destroying views, but their primary goal is to insinuate themselves into the discussion by way of sensation. They see that 30% of the country hold far right views so they use those views as a Trojan horse. The weird thing is that there is no army in the horse, only one vain, base, amoral human.
With MSM comedies like the Colbert Report you know where they stand because of their venue, their targets and their visible fan base. Colbert remains in character almost all of the time. I was astounded by the fact that he was given a place at the head table of the 2006 White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner. The man who invited him confesses that he was unfamiliar with Stephen’s work. Maybe inviting him to speak was suggested as a joke by an underling. Maybe Mark Smith, outgoing president of the White House Press Corps Association just didn’t get it.
Colbert’s performance had enough gall to fill all the bladders in China. I am not sure whether he deserves more applause than he got. It might have been better to have had Jon Stewart reprise his “You’re Hurting America, Please Stop.” speech with a different target.
When bloggers are deadpan and also anonymous, they sometimes draw commentary from people who hold the views that they are aping. I think that to achieve any kind of positive goal, satire not only has to shoot at its mark, it has to wound it as well.
One of the most famous pieces of satire is Jonathan Swift’s modest proposal. I think it is one of the greatest literary achievements in the history of the English Language. It was steadfast in its tone but obviously false in its sentiment.
