Satire

When Expecting Politicians To Have Principles Is Considered Unreasonable

Samuel Hooper1 Comment

trump-announce

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Damn those stubborn idealists

Sometimes satirical American news site The Onion strikes a little too close to home.

The latest case in point is an excellent News in Brief story from last week, entitled “Precious Little Voter Needs To Feel Inspired By Candidate“:

CLEVELAND—Noting how important it is for him to find a campaign that stirs genuine optimism and enthusiasm in its supporters, sources confirmed Tuesday that precious little voter Adam Higgins needs to feel inspired by a candidate. “To be perfectly honest, I just can’t bring myself to vote for someone I’m not excited about,” said the delicate little flower, who simply has to experience an authentic and personal connection to a candidate and believe in his wittle-bitty heart that the candidate’s message will legitimately move the country forward in meaningful and significant ways. “Policies and experience are certainly important, but a candidate has to have a vision I truly believe in. I’m only going to cast a ballot for someone who actually provides real hope for the future of this country [because I need to feel all snuggly-wuggly and special].” Sources further confirmed the fragile, dainty buttercup feels he absolutely must vote for someone who is trustworthy and competent.

The Onion’s fictional Adam Higgins sums up this blog’s attitude nicely in a single paragraph. Let Semi-Partisan Politics be a refuge for dainty buttercups everywhere!

But maybe it is time to give up on our dainty buttercup ways and embrace the cold hard reality of politics, where even fundamental positions on issues as consequential as the future of our democracy are nothing more than bargaining chips to be picked up, traded and discarded as politicians seek to advance their careers.

Maybe if people like me – those who think that political ideas and governing ideology actually matter, and that there is nothing mature or laudable about “pragmatically” lurching from crisis to crisis, dealing with each one on an isolated, ad hoc basis in pursuit of favourable newspaper headlines – simply shut up and got out of the way, the whole system would suddenly start functioning much better.

Actually, no, it wouldn’t. It is for the political class to change their ways, not the citizens who many politicians have so conspicuously failed to serve. Give me Jeremy Corbyn over Ed Miliband any day, even though his politics are anathema to this blog. And give me Margaret Thatcher over almost anybody in the Ted Heath tribute act of a government we currently have in Britain.

The most unnerving Onion headlines and stories are generally those which in the the course of recent years have become impossible to distinguish from real life, or those which invert reality so that the offensive and unnatural is considered normal.

This is one of those stories.

 

And no, this blog does not support Donald Trump.

 

Political centrism

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Tales From The Safe Space, Part 4 – Guardian Article Or Satire?

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Godfrey Elfwick - Gender - Identify as a carrot

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Not The Onion

Just as Donald Trump’s presidential candidacy teeters on the line between brilliant satire and terrifying reality, so too does this Guardian-style headline from Godfrey Elfwick.

Stylistically correct in every respect, and steeped in the same self-obsessed, exhibitionist tone of Identity Politics as practised by Safe Space-dwellers everywhere, the mere fact that you can no longer dismiss Elfwick’s confected headline as satire without a second thought really says it all.

After all, if grown men can identify as six-year-old girls and teenage girls can identity as cats, what is to say that the 2020s will not be marked by the growth of the Vegetable Rights movement?

Notting Hill was very prescient.

And yes, sometimes our best weapon against this toxic Identity Politics culture is ridicule.

 

Safe Space Notice - 2

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Fighting Safe Space Culture & College Censorship: The Best Weapon Is Ridicule

Samuel Hooper14 Comments

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Sometimes the best weapon against the New Age Censors on university campuses is laughter at their desire to be treated like babies

All defenders of free speech have a duty to push back against the growing hordes of petty, censorious student activists and their childish demands for trigger warnings, safe spaces and the banning of speakers with contradictory opinions from campus. But it is equally important that we do not go so far that we inadvertently give additional weight – and a false sense of seriousness – to their demands.

Scholarly articles certainly have their part to play – “In College and Hiding From Scary Ideas” by Judith Shulevitz in the New York Times, for example, was instrumental in bringing the problem of infantilised students to a wider audience. And this blog tries to contribute in its own way too, with pointed critiques of the students who want to ban clapping, demands that universities teach adults the meaning of sexual consent, and the abuse of the label “problematic” to ban unwanted ideas and opinions.

But sometimes humour can achieve more than ten earnest articles making the same point. And so it is gratifying to see both South Park and satirical newspaper The Onion take on these symptoms of student infantilisation.

South Park recently devoted an entire episode of their current season to the topic of safe spaces – see the excerpt above, or watch the entire episode online if you are based in the United States.

And as is so often the case, hearing the language of safe spaces and “harmful” ideas spout from the mouths of Randy Marsh or Eric Cartman does more to render this burgeoning culture ridiculous than all the books in the world – even the excellent “Trigger Warning: Is the fear of being offensive killing free speech?” by Mick Hume, which I am currently reading.

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Best Thing Of The Day

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The satirical newspaper and website The Onion can be somewhat hit-and-miss these days, but the other day they posted one of their best articles in years. In terms of sheer whimsy and surrealism, I don’t think it can be beaten, at least not since the hilarious George W. Bush pieces that they posted in the waxing days of his presidency.

In their latest piece, The Onion report that Secretary of the Interior, Sally Jewell, has been sworn in as the nation’s first female, and 45th president of the United States, after President Obama, Joe Biden and the next six in line to the presidency were killed in a tragic hot air balloon disaster.

I quote at length:

WASHINGTON—Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell was sworn in today as the 45th president of the United States, reciting the oath of office in a brief ceremony at the White House and expressing her continued disbelief that the president, vice president, House speaker, president pro tempore of the Senate, Secretary of State, Secretary of the Treasury, Secretary of Defense, and attorney general were all in that hot-air balloon together.

Speaking to citizens in a short inaugural address, Jewell, a 57-year-old Seattle businesswoman who was confirmed as Interior Secretary less than three weeks ago, acknowledged the challenges ahead for the nation and noted how “really quite strange” it was that Barack Obama, Joe Biden, John Boehner, Patrick Leahy, John Kerry, Jacob Lew, Chuck Hagel, and Eric Holder mutually agreed to take the day off and rent a hot-air balloon for the afternoon.

“It is with both humility and gratitude that I assume this office, while extending my deepest condolences to the families of Barack Obama and the seven government officials directly before me in the presidential line of succession, who, for reasons that still aren’t entirely clear, decided to drive together to a fairground outside Washington and take a two-hour hot-air balloon tour of the Virginia countryside,” Jewell said in her speech, delivered less than a day after the country’s top politicians reportedly agreed on a whim that a communal balloon ride would be “a lot of fun.” “I never expected to be in this position, especially not under circumstances in which our nation’s highest leaders died on the same day in an accident involving a hot-air balloon, which, for some reason, all eight of them willingly piled into even though it was clearly posted that the maximum occupancy was four. You have to admit, it’s very bizarre.”

The Onion's Fictitious Hot Air Balloon Disaster
The Onion’s Fictitious Hot Air Balloon Disaster

And what a great feat of photoshopping too. The article continues:

According to Jewell, adding to her bewilderment was the fact that the men were neither barred from the outing nor even moderately discouraged by aides or Secret Service agents. Rather, reports indicate that members of the officials’ security details simply smiled and happily waved to the two highest officeholders of the executive branch, the two leading figures in Congress, and four top cabinet members as they crowded into the balloon’s basket and began to ascend.

“What’s particularly odd is that these officials weren’t even ordered into the balloon by President Obama; it was Chuck Hagel’s idea, and everyone else readily went along with it of their own will,” said President Jewell in front of framed portraits of the deceased men. “And given that the president and vice president aren’t even allowed to fly in the same plane for safety reasons, it’s truly shocking that, instead of reconsidering their actions when John Kerry had a brief moment of trepidation before stepping aboard, they all just said, ‘It’s fine! You’re going to love it!’”

“And the next thing you know, there they are, rising to 500 feet in that cramped, bulging basket, smiling and laughing without a concern in the world,” Jewell added. “Looking at it now, it all seems incredibly foolhardy, if not almost entirely improbable.”

This stuff is just priceless. The Onion and The Daily Mash continue to be two of the best, most amusing websites in existence today.

Your Business Model Offends Me

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When a person’s ability to fly, see through walls and shoot lasers from his eyes is more plausible to readers than your firm’s continued profitability and existence, you know you are in trouble.

The Onion reports widespread incredulity that The Daily Planet newspaper, famous  for being Clark Kent AKA Superman’s employer, has not gone out of business given the fate being suffered by every other major metropolitan daily newspaper in the world.

They report:

While they acknowledged that enjoying the adventures of a superhero who can fly, lift a bus over his head, and shoot beams of intense heat from his eyes requires some suspension of disbelief, longtime fans told reporters they simply could not accept a daily metropolitan newspaper still thriving in the media landscape of 2012.

Those fans have a point. It continues:

Other fans said The Daily Planet—which for some strange reason has not been acquired by multimillionaire Lex Luthor with a promise to give readers shorter articles with more sizzle—is so deeply woven into the Superman universe that they had no choice but to avoid the comic altogether. They said even the most exciting stories are routinely marred by absurd depictions of a publication that somehow flourishes in print and whose millions of loyal readers seem oblivious to the idea of getting news online faster and for free.

“I can totally buy into an epic battle in which Superman claps his hands and creates a sonic boom that sends Darkseid flying through 50 buildings,” lifelong reader Richard Taft said. “But as soon as people start lining up at newsstands to read about it in The Daily Planet, I think, ‘Doesn’t anyone have a computer at work? Are there no smartphones?’ Before I know it, I’m suddenly aware I’m reading a fictional comic book, and the spell’s totally broken.”

And finally a point dear to my own heart:

Lou Wadlow, owner of a Boston-area comic-book store, said the outright ridiculousness of The Daily Planet not putting up a pay wall in a futile attempt to remain profitable is causing the popular comic to lose readers, especially younger ones.

Yeah, timesonline.co.uk. Cough.

Priceless.