What's the Difference Between a Smear and Satire?
The controversy over the New Yorker cover cartoon, showing Barack and Michelle Obama as terrorists who admire Osama bin Laden and hate America, continues to rage in the blogs. Jeffrey Weiss, in the The Dallas Morning News Religion blog, defends the New Yorker. He says he laughed, he squirmed, he didn't believe the magazine thinks Obama is a terrorist. Therefore, the satire worked for him.
Good for him. From the many, many comments on blogs discussing this, my impression is that Weiss is in the minority. Most readers failed to understand that the clueless people who believe absurd smears were the target of the satire. Most readers thought, and continue to think to this day, that the Obamas themselves were the target. Satire it may be, but not effective satire if the intended target is oblivious to the attack.
So, in summary, this is my understanding of how satire works in
modern America:
Wingnuts have habitually slandered the Obamas.
The New Yorker simply repeats the slanders and calls it satire.
Liberals, Democrats, Muslims, blacks, women are offended.
Wingnuts grin.
The New Yorker basks in the commotion it caused.
It's not that appreciation of satire has diminished.
Satire itself has.
RIP, Jonathan Swift.
Now, just to show I'm not entirely humor-impaired, I repeat an
Obama joke that I find to be funny.
Q. Why did Obama cross the road?
A. That's racist.
A Mess By Any Name
A month or so ago, the Dallas City Council wanted to distract the voters, so they held a popularity contest for naming the highway that they plan to pave over the Trinity River with. Instead of the institutionally preferred choices like Trinity Parkway or Riverfront Blvd., the voters got way too into it and chose Cesar Chavez Blvd. OMG! No way was the Dallas establishment going to allow their prized new highway to be named after an Hispanic labor leader from California.
Always thinking, the Council decides to compound their blunder by finding another street they can name after Cesar Chavez. Ross Avenue, anyone? Instead of solving one problem, they've created another. Now they have both the Hispanic community and East Dallas riled up.
Doesn't anyone on the Dallas City Council know that the first rule of holes is, if you find yourself in one, quit digging?
Mark Davis' Choices for Obama's Veep
Mark Davis, in a column in The Dallas Morning News, makes his recommendations for Barack Obama's vice presidential pick. Ordinarily, you'd have to think that a Mark Davis recommendation automatically invalidates any chance a Democrat might have of being a good pick for Obama. But let's play along.
Davis' picks overlap my own. He includes Evan Bayh, Ed Rendell, Joe Biden and Bill Richardson on his short list. I've already ruled out Richardson (boring loser) and Biden (verbose loser). But both have something very important going for them, and that's the vetting that comes with running for President. More and more, it looks like this election is Obama's to lose. The last thing he'll want to happen is lose the election because he picks an untested candidate for vice president who turns out to be a serious liability. Richardson and Biden may not add much to the ticket, but they are unlikely to detract anything, either.
That leaves Bayh and Rendell on both Mark Davis' and my short lists. Rendell is losing ground in my rankings because it looks like Obama won't need Rendell's help to carry Pennsylvania. And Bayh's stock is rising because Obama could very well use Bayh's help in carrying Indiana. A Bayh pick means Obama is playing offense. A Rendell pick means he's playing defense. And, right now, in mid-July, Obama is definitely on the offense.
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