Conservatives Attempt Satire, Fail

Posted by Staff, Whiskey Fire at 1:01 PM on July 8, 2009.

There's nothing more confusing than wingnut attempts at satire.

Here for instance is an emanation that recently made itself detectable over at NRO, where the zingers include advice, intended, if you please, as satirical, that the GOP might at some point begin filing "frivolous ethics complaints against all [Democratic] elected officials" (keep in mind that that this is supposed to be in the tradition of Swift (Ernie Swift, a guy I was in junior high school with, who liked to snort his own boogers for yuks)) -- something we're supposed devoutly to wish has never ever occurred to Republicans ever in the past (see also the 1990s, et passim) (and yes, this sentence is grammatical, motherfucker: the convoluted (but correct) structure mirrors the convolution of the logic being discussed, and so this sentence, in fine, exhibits a pleasing symmetry of content and form). We also learn that the election of Barack Obama, as well as the elaborate conspiracy to pull the wool over the eyes of the nation so that Sarah Palin always looks like an idiot whenever she talks, even though she's IN TRUTH Jesus, Buddha, Milton Friedman, and the Fucking Wizard of Oz wrapped into one magical moose-murdering package, is really all to do with a Sinister Hidden Agenda:

Shazam!

"A Modest Proposal" relies upon the generally accepted opinion that it is wrong to eat babies. That is, if you will, the common ground upon which the satire rests. This NRO thing is not satire. The common ground upon which it rests is nonexistent. It is all, it emerges, my bum, and thoroughly unintelligible to the uninitiated, which is to say, to the sane. (The implicit, though still stirring motto here is "Give Me Liberty, Or Give me Death, But I Won't Say 'America Stinks.'" Wolverines!)

But this is not to say that there is no good wingnut satire in regards to the Sarah Palin psychadelia. Indeed there is, and it's some pretty high-grade shit, too. The unintentional satire is to be savored. To wit:

That last sentence is magnificent, and to be cherished. It is a golden gift and a jewel for the ages and I do not mind saying so in the least or the slightest. It is, in its way... Art, and evidence of quite extremely competent masterwork of the sort the US of A still leads the world in producing. God Bless America. Gorgeous. Just marvelous.

Tagged as: satire, conservatives, national review, sarah palin