My Satirical Self
September 18, 2006 by Mary Wynne-Wynter
I hope that the boring era of 'edgy' is is on the way out.
I've certainly been guilty of overuse of irony and satire in my communications. For me, it was a defense mechanism - a way to avoid and hide and I eventually became aware of that. But what I never realized was how bad (and repetitive, tedious and stuck), I sounded to others. It has its place when used judiciously and sparingly. But it can turn others off in a way that is very difficult to turn around.
I can remember as if it were yesterday: a defining moment for me, about this sad trend. It was 1994, and I was waiting with friends, to be seated in a chain restaurant, on a busy Friday night. A young waiter was loudly, rudely, and boastfully proclaiming that he did not see the big deal about the death of Jackie Onassis and desperately trying to be overheard for what he thought was his boldness and wit. I was hotly angered, pitied him and recognized the seeds of a very bad trend. Today, it would be the norm, and just another opportunity to turn up the iPod volume. But I think of that moment when I need to make a choice between cutting loose and self-management. You never know who could be listening and forming a lasting impression about you.
This column beautifully describes how the lowest common denominator of communications permeates our culture. This is not the way to thrive in change. If you want to differentiate yourself, be mindful of your communications and lead by example. Humor is a wonderful tool if its intelligent and if it fits honestly with your message. Both Ann Richards and Kinky Friedman are good examples.
My Satirical Self: "How making fun of absolutely everything is defining a generation."
At the outset, I said I had taken shelter in the ridiculous. Upon reflection, the ridiculous may not be the most well shielded of retreats. Can you take shelter in the ridiculous if everywhere becomes ridiculous? For the tools of satire, the sharp knives of sarcasm and the pointy shivs of irony and the toy hammer of lampoon are being wielded with widespread enthusiasm, and not merely by cunning builders of satirical speeches and stories. Rather, they are being lent to us all, to enable every possible construction. Did you hear, for example, the news conference President Bush gave in Germany over the summer? “I’m looking forward to the feast you’re going to have tonight,” he said to the German chancellor in a moment of folksy charm, “and I understand that I may have the honor of slicing the pig.” This drew laughs, and when his remarks wound down, the president repeated, “I’m looking forward to that pig tonight.” This before fielding the following from a reporter:
“Does it concern you,” the man asked, stuttering, “that the Beirut airport has been bombed, and do you see a risk of triggering a wider war? And on Iran, they’ve so far refused to respond. Is it now past the deadline, or do they still have more time to respond?”
“I thought,” Bush replied, “you were going to ask about the pig.”
Try to ignore, if you can, the image of the carcass of a pig, Bush poised, knife in hand, ready to carve. Consider instead that when asked on an international stage about real carnage — about spreading violence in the Middle East, about a constellation of worries suggesting a world at the brink of war — the president’s reply did not take the questioner’s inquiry seriously but, rather, sarcastically. His rhetoric sounded less like that of a steward of state — one addressing serious matters with sobriety — than that of a smartass. And this was not Juvenal’s sarcasm, or Twain’s, or even Colbert’s: it was not elegantly tuned to a point nor artfully part of a formal design. It was, instead, almost perfectly inappropriate and, of course, not unindicative of the president’s normal rhetorical mode. For it is not, I think, as is so often said, that the president is as much inarticulate as he is too clearly articulate, in a way: his tone, consistently condescending, betrays his sense of being, like a satirist, above those he calls down to. And that tone — carelessly sarcastic, thoughtlessly ironic, indiscriminately sardonic — that is the very one you now find everywhere. Bush is us; Bush is me: his is the same sarcasm I employ when I tell my father, once again, that of course I didn’t read today’s op-ed.
It makes me wonder what happens when the language of argument and the language of ridicule become the same, when the address of a potentate is voiced no more soberly than the goofings of some rube. Perhaps that leveling of language merely passes, the rhetorical registers recalibrated by nothing so much as an unfolding of the days. Or perhaps there’s another way of putting it, one voiced by President Bush himself. After Colbert, after Germany, just before Labor Day, there was yet another news conference, one that found the president asking the press corps — who so lately protested their mistreatment at satirical hands — how long they were to be stationed in a temporary briefing room across from their typical quarters. “The decision will be made by commanders on the ground,” cracked one. “There’s no timetable,” went another. “What do you think this is,” quipped the president, “the correspondents’ dinner or something?”
That, it seems to me, is an excellent question.
(Via NYT > Most E-mailed Articles.)