It's been a while since I've been on here due to work, writing some other things that may or may not ever see the light of day in publishing and my newest military education class (200+ pages of reading a week). So, this post may seem a bit outdated as it stems from some reactions to a wonderful bit of satire posted by the devious minds over at a site called The Duffel Blog. If you have any connection with the military, I highly suggest going over there and poking around to lighten your day (warning, there are many posts that may offend).
Right after the election The Duffel Blog posted an article regarding how hundreds of thousands of absentee ballots were lost in transit and, if they had made it stateside on time, would have swung the election for Romney. Now, if you read the article and have any experience with the wonderful military postal system you understand what the author is trying to get across. It's not about the election, but about how everything that he discussed delaying the ballots actually occurs in delivering our mail while overseas. I know of one person who received mail from a prior deployment at sea a year later on his second deployment on our ship (it just stayed in the military mail system until our FPO reactivated) and I was still receiving care packages that went to Afghanistan and came to Camp Lejeune 6 months after we returned and 8 months after our mail address was cut off. It took 8 months for those packages to get to AFG and back to us.
But, back to the point. Take a look at the comments at the bottom of that article. Over 500 comments on Facebook about the article. Most of the comments are from people who took the article seriously and many of those have no military experience whatsoever. Some even blame the President for conspiring to suppress the military vote (not what happens at all). They didn't even take the time to check where they were getting their facts from (a satire website) nor did they listen when people told them it was a joke (those people are raging liberals conspiring with the administration to steal an election). What in the world is going wrong with us?
We have forgotten how to laugh at ourselves. Satire is there to show us how absurd we make things and to point out flaws in our thinking and the way we live. It does it in such a manner to make the situation humorous so as to dull the edge of the critique. Done well, it seems like real news hence the popularity of The Onion and The Duffel Blog (at least within the military world). Most young people get their "news" from Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert and take it at face value as a real news organization when, in fact, they are mocking what news has become in the last 20 years. I would even postulate they are poking fun at people for using them as a news source and treating them as such by asking them to check and verify sources.
Unfortunately, the art of satire is lost when we don't understand where the critique belongs. If we don't pay attention to society and the news and how it affects us, we can't comprehend how funny and absurd life can become. It's almost like going to a comedy show and instead of laughing we are there to pick a fight with the comedian and the half of the audience we don't like. Are we really that sensitive that any bit of humor used to point out a flaw in ourselves or society is the worst injury we can fathom? Do we have to lash out with vile attacks in response to a humorous attempt to make us and society reflect on a problem we all face and take part in? The Court Jester was one who could tell the ruler he/she was doing something stupid and down a wrong path. The Jester could do this because the fool was the wise one who corrected things. By poking fun at something, the King/Queen could see the folly in a humorous manner without having to endure the appearance of insubordination. We need people who engage in satire and play the wise fool because they are more prophetic than we can imagine.
So next time you see someone engaging in good satire trying to change something enjoy the laugh, find out what they are critiquing and then determine if it is something you can change in yourself or in the world around you. Comments like the one about the above article don't solve anything, just make you look dour and uninformed.
