{"id":18479,"date":"2011-03-02T12:00:31","date_gmt":"2011-03-02T18:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=18479"},"modified":"2011-03-02T12:30:03","modified_gmt":"2011-03-02T18:30:03","slug":"the-wondrous-gift-of-satire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=18479","title":{"rendered":"The Wond’rous Gift Of Satire!"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve been blogging for a long, long time. \u00a0And I’ve pretty much seen it all, by this point; angry bloggers, angrier bloggers, apoplectic bloggers, incontinently-angry bloggers and everything in between…<\/p>\n

…but as much as I’ve seen, been and done, there are still few things that wrap a smile around my mug like really impeccable parody.<\/p>\n

Parody is among the most difficult tools in the writer’s toolbox; the bad parodists merely ape their targets with facile caricature; the mediocre ones get the surface \u00a0cadence, patterns, accents, but miss the deeper rhythms and driving gestalts<\/em>.<\/p>\n

The truly great parodists – Benchley, Swinburne, Calverley, “Saint Paul” \u00a0Ward – “get” the very essence of that which they’re parodying.<\/p>\n

And it’s a dying art. \u00a0Hardly anyone practices it well these days; it’s emblematic that Weird Al Yankovic may be the banner parodist of our time.<\/p>\n

Or so I thought, until a little bird twigged me to the blog Mercury Rising <\/em>– the deepest, most knowing, down-deep-in-the-pit-of-the-gut parody of a “feminist” blogger, awash in group cant and overheated groupthink and smug pseudo-intellectual entitlement masquerading as critique…<\/p>\n

…and, wonder of wonders, is a local blog!<\/p>\n

The question isn’t “is this brilliant parody”; reading this bit here<\/a> – one of a \u00a0Wildean smorgasbord of bon mots <\/em>twisted by such deftly rendered spoofs of “rage as if unto incontinence”, words nearly failed me.<\/p>\n

One example among the parade of genius:<\/p>\n

“This is exactly the sort of thing right-wingers love to do. See, for example, Mitch Berg and his buddies at \u201cProtest Warrior\u201d. So it\u2019s no surprise that they\u2019re trying the same old agent proschlockateur silliness.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

…”Phoenix Woman” executes the logical equivalent of a triple negative that actually makes perfect contextual sense; “she” is writing, putatively, about alleged conservatives supposedly planning (loudly and in public!) to carry out a violent false-flag at the union demonstrations in Madison; “she” invokes “Protest Warrior”, a group from the 2004 era that lampooned liberal protest memes – signs, chants and the like – with all the vein-bulging belligererence of Stephen Colbert…<\/p>\n

…and yet “she”, Phoenix, knows that – and what’s more, “she” knows you <\/em>know that, and “she” also knows you know they know that…<\/p>\n

…and yet “she” carries it off so well that the question isn’t “is it great parody?”, but rather “what conservative writer has the parodic chops to carry it off?”<\/p>\n

Joe “Learned Foot” Tucci? \u00a0I asked – it’s not him.<\/p>\n

Ryan “Dirty Mushroom” Rhodes? He’s too busy.<\/p>\n

Lileks? \u00a0No – even James isn’t good enough to subdue the tics in his own utterly-developed style enough to so totally not only inhabit a character, but twist it back on itself so brilliantly.<\/p>\n

Mr. D? \u00a0Gary Miller? \u00a0Kouba? \u00a0Ringer? \u00a0Bogus? \u00a0Mall Diva or Tiger Lily (or both)?\u00a0 I thought about each of them – and unless each has been sandbagging us all for all these years, I don’t think any of ’em has it in them. \u00a0 Close, but…no.<\/p>\n

Before you ask – It’ s not me. Sheesh – I wish<\/em>.\u00a0 I have a piece of the waterfront that I cover pretty well, but as parody goes, I bow at the feet of whatever master is behind this.<\/p>\n

So the only question is – what conservative blogger is <\/em>behind this savage, ingenious parody?<\/p>\n

The literary world awaits.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve been blogging for a long, long time. \u00a0And I’ve pretty much seen it all, by this point; angry bloggers, angrier bloggers, apoplectic bloggers, incontinently-angry bloggers and everything in between… …but as much as I’ve seen, been and done, there are still few things that wrap a smile around my mug like really impeccable parody. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18479","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18479","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18479"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18479\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18481,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18479\/revisions\/18481"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18479"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18479"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18479"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}