SATIRE
The most difficult job in America is that of a satirist.
I don’t know who came up with that dazzlingly perceptive notion, but I first heard if from the brilliant Jean Shepherd, so I’ll credit him with it.
Expanding on it, Shepherd explained that when one is living a satire, or living in one, it becomes very-hard-to-impossible to top. To make a joke, as it were, about a joke.
I’ve been reminded of it often, most pointedly and depressingly during the Reagan years. That this is a country that elected him president – twice – is/was far beyond anything a satirist could come up with. And the fact that he is now revered – well…
There are countless other examples, from Evangelical Christianity to George W. Bush to Fox News to Ann Coulter being given face-time, and so on, making the challenge more and more difficult.
Yesterday, the thought washed over me once again with the proposal by a Wisconsin legislator to permit schoolteachers to carry guns.
And today, in keeping with the surreal, SNL sketch-quality of the whole thing, on CNN and elsewhere, people are actually debating it – without laughing.
I mean, could Jon Stewart top this?
Actually, maybe – because, once this becomes an accepted custom, it’s easy to foresee that it is only a matter of time until a gun-toting teacher – or more likely several, since these things tend to come in bunches – opens fire on his/her students.
At which point the same legislator will doubtless propose that the student body be armed. And again, as with Ronald Reagan and the other above cited examples, our faces will remain straight.
Thomas B. Sawyer
October 6, 2006
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