Save Satirists: Pass a Massive Reality Bailout
My fellow Americans,
Despite often referring to myself as a satirist, I readily admit I’m not the best, and will even go as far as saying that I sometimes don’t even fully understand satirical techniques. Nonetheless, I feel it is necessary for me to come forward and make this claim: Now is a dangerous and frightening time for American satirists and we need massive government intervention to keep from becoming completely extinct.
Basically, satirists these days are forced to become absurdists in order to try and ply their craft. We are forced to go far and beyond the surrealist reality we are now faced with and include things like Space Monkeys and Bigfoots in our material, otherwise our material will read like normal news reports. And as any good satirist will tell you, once you start working Space Monkeys into your work, it’s only a matter of time before you start trying to sell people on Thetans.
This is why I request a Reality Bailout of the struggling satire industry. We are at the precipice here, people, and we’re looking at a world where those like Michael Medved and Glenn Beck will soon be considered “Master Satirists.” Just one look at recent developments shows the true depth of the crisis:
- Sarah Palin was blessed by a witch hunter and believes it helped her political career.
- Political entertainer Rush Limbaugh actually said this: “The US Constitution has been abrogated and is being tossed overboard section by section by the Democrat Party and the American left.”
- Radio entertainer Mark Levin actually said this: “The liberal uses crises, real or manufactured, to expand the power of government at the expense of the individual and private property. He has spent, in earnest, 70 years evading the Constitution’s limits on governmental power.”
Make no mistake, the United States is currently knee-deep in a massive satirical crisis and the only way to fix it is to dump a huge amount of reality into the narrative. But even in the midst of an satirical existential threat, Conservative entertainers are continuing to push the dialogue further and further right to a level of surrealism that Kafka would have been ashamed to attempt. Just yesterday, popular Right-Wing Political Entertainer Hugh Hewitt asked questions like this to Sarah Palin …
“Governor, your candidacy has ignited extreme hostility, even some hatred on the left and in some parts of the media. Are you surprised? And what do you attribute this reaction to?”
… then Hewitt went on Fox News and boasted about his Fair and Balanced interview of the GOP Vice-Presidential nominee. This is not just a Reality Crisis. We are actually running a Reality Deficit.
My friends, it is time for us to come together in the spirit of non-partisanship. We need Congress to come together as one and pass strong and decisive legislation that will help restart the flow of reality, so American families can meet their daily needs of realism and American satirists can meet their payrolls. We need to make clear that the United States is serious about restoring reality throughout our national dialogue.
Thank you, and always remember: We come against the spirit of witchcraft. We come against the python spirits.
–WKW