Word: jokes
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...That's the problem with satire. A lot of people won't get the joke. Or won't want...
...white lady--we need that more than ever. Yet the fear of sounding bigoted is precisely what has made (white, male) late-night comics and their (largely white) audiences tentative. (Dave Chappelle, your country needs you!) In June, Jon Stewart had to assure his audience after an Obama joke, "You're allowed to laugh...
...America lost its sense of humor? If it seems that way, perhaps that's because dourness is effective politics. In Minnesota, former SNL comic Al Franken hit trouble in his Senate race because of the dark legacy of his past: not drug use or infidelity but a joke he made in 1995 about 60 Minutes' Andy Rooney being a rapist. His opponent, Norm Coleman, and Coleman's surrogates jumped on the joke, accusing Franken of thinking rape is funny...
...course, Franken's joke was never about rape being funny but about the absurdity of imagining a beloved TV curmudgeon as a rapist. That may not be your cup of tea, but it's the same kind of dark impulse that inspires gender-conscious comedian Sarah Silverman's humor: "I was raped by a doctor--which is so bittersweet for a Jewish girl." Does that mean she hates women...
This is why true believers suspect satirists, even those--as for liberals upset with the New Yorker--in their own camp. Satirists don't make crystal clear how you're supposed to read their work. They don't give you a road map to correct thinking, because a joke explained is neither funny nor persuasive. They give voice to the enemy's beliefs. And this makes it easy to call them traitors...