Sick and Satired

More than anything else, I'd reckon satire to be a function of derisive humor, usually ID'd in the States as reductive and blending like mirthful lamentations about human folly with wit and 'edginess". Satire is also a great place to look for the pulse of a Nation, just ask John Stewart or Voltaire. If your barroom bitching sessions were burnished and broadcasted nationwide, presto: modern satire. It isn't much of a coincidence then that Stephen Colbert hails us as "Nation" during his broadcast. 

Maybe as a symptom of the expressive freedom Americans have enjoyed for goin' on 3 centuries, satire in journalism is razor sharp and really efficient at very free, human stuff. It gets people talking, laughing and thinking. How's that for proving enlightenment ideals correctamundo, the freer the better. 

Take Candide, for instance. Senseless bloodshed and dalliances with saucy Parisian minxes all hit poor old Candide by virtue of "everything is best in this best of all possible worlds." Voltaire takes a criminally distilled philosophy and condenses it even more, which is when it becomes funny. Satirical.

The pithy jabs of satire suggest that the satirists firm and comprehensive grasp of the topic, such that digressions into jest are almost a reprieve from edification. Reverence and revelry don't really jive. Neither do complexity and condescension. Satire says This is so base and halfbaked, we can freely select elements of the topic and brandish them inward, against the theme. 

w/r/t the birth control thing, I don't give a soaring toss. I will happily subsidize your rogering. May the jolliest of jolly rogers it forever be.