let us sit upon the ground and tell sad stories of the death of satire

Satire, d. 2008, RIP.

Irony in the US died in the early eighties. As Steve Martin said in Roxanne, "Oh, irony! Oh no, we don't get that here. See, people ski topless here while smoking dope, so irony's not really a high priority. We haven't had any irony here since about '83, when I was the only practitioner of it. And I stopped because I was tired of being stared at."

When President Reagan, the Howdy Doody of presidents, can travel to East Berlin and say with a straight face, "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall," while all the time illegally funding the Contra rebels with illegal arm sales to Iran, the country that killed our Marines in Lebanon, while also selling chemical (and other) weapons to Saddam Hussein (why look, there's Dick Cheney and Donnie Rumsfield), all after we funded the Mujaheddin to toss the Soviet Army out of Afghanistan, if Irony was on life support then, that alone would have pulled the plug.

Irony officially was dead when we had to add the phrase, "..., NOT," to anything remotely ironic so people would actually understand what we were saying was supposed to be ironic.

Which brings us to the present day and the Obama New Yorker cover and the general public and newsroom (hyperbolic) response. Clearly, satire is dead in the US.

When the President can stand before the press and say the phrase, "Some people say it will take 7 years to get the oil (from off shore drilling). Well, just imagine if we had started this process 7 years ago," and the press room doesn't break up in laughter while someone reminds the President that in 2002 he fought Congress to spend $120 million to buy back leases from the oil companies for land off the west coast of Florida called the Destin Dome. You know, 2002, when we still had deep sea drilling rigs here in the US. Before we shipped them over to Nigeria. ("Mr. President, with all due respect, you were a lousy oil man who saw three oil companies fail under your leadership, and your Presidency isn't going much better, just WTF should we take your advice on where to drill?")

If the President can satire himself and nobody gets the joke, including the President, satire in the US is at best moribund and declining.

So we need a new word we can add to the end of sentences that are meant to be satiric, just like the "not" for ironic statement. My suggestion is "Psych!" That phrase would also work well with the current political bait and switch tactics.

"Where have you gone George Carlin, a nation turns its lonely eyes to you.
What's that you say, Robin Williams, Mr. Carlin and left and gone away."