The Danger In Satire (A Mea Culpa)
I recall the non-famous and hastily-made-up-by-me quotation, “One’s purpose to head north prevents them not from still drifting west.”I know I know. Bartlett’s immortality is my lot. But let’s not get derailed here. The truth is, I've headed south.
I have become mean and surly on this blog, without ever having intended to do either. And I am neither in real life.
Take for instance, the post below about Harry Reid (UPDATE: I have taken the post down. There is no need to elaborate on its nature any further than what this essay has to say about it.) Looking back, that post is downright wrong and offensive. Not because I have higher opinions about Reid, but because I’ve saddled those with clinically-mapped disabilites and challenges with Harry Reid's complete facility for evil. I’ve piggy-backed the wrong host in the name of being funny. And I'm sorry for it.
I can’t say I wasn’t warned. John from Wuzzadem, loved the headline about “very special prosecutor,” after I pitched my idea to him. I had not yet weighed exactly how I was going to write it. All John tried to do was warn me not to go too far out on the limb with the overused, bastardized and woefully appropriated “retard” theme. And I actually intended to take that into consideration.
I somehow missed.
It’s not like satire is based on unadulterated niceness. There is a fundamentally biting road-base to mockery in any form, and I want to say at the outset that my repentance for the gratuitous stops at the edge of Islam’s waters. I am not sorry for my acid-tongued treatment of what is bilious by nature in and of itself.
Beyond that, I am intending to contract the parameters of my own template. Believe it or not, I do have standards. One of which is one that refuses to utilize foul language on this blog. I have discovered, however, that one can still drift into the harbor of overkill without ever tossing an F-bomb on my blog. In fact it could be that my playground-comforts with the English language make what I do so much more potentially harmful. It is possible to saw down an oak next to the forbidden tree and still wind up killing someone.
This all came to a head with a short-but-informative exchange I had with The Anchoress—a blog I recommend as highly as I can emphasize. Again, my loss of compass only brought into relief when I stepped outside of my own myopic little blog world.
Oddly enough, I’ve always joked that the main difference between Scrappleface, and myself is that Scott Ott most likely prays before he posts something. And once again, my own penchant for satire hits a sad truth; only in this case that sad truth is germane to me, and not somebody else.
posted by Doofus @ 10:50 AM
<< Home