I would have recognized the opportunity for a world-class
joke, but would never allow myself to be funny at the cost
of making somebody else feel like something the cat drug in.
-- Kurt Vonnegut. Timequake p.141 (1997)
Ever wonder why conservative comedy is so unfunny? The point of satire
is to comfort the afflicted by afflicting the comfortable... whereas the
point of conservatism is the exact opposite. Truth is, ridiculing the
non-privileged isn't particularly funny -- it's just mean. The result?
There's virtually
no good conservative comedy.
-- Garry Trudeau. Doonesbury (Aug 3, 2014)
Is the very notion of a conservative comedian an oxymoron, given that
comedy by definition is often the revenge of underdogs against the
privileged? If the powerful pick on the less powerful, or worse, the
powerless, are the jokes doomed to come off as bratty, if not just plain
mean?
-- Frank Rich. "Can Conservatives Be Funny?"
New York Magazine. (May 20, 2014)
http://nymag.com/news/frank-rich/conservative-comedians-2014-5/
Satire, to do its moral work, must itself be more or less moral. And the
law is this: Broadly speaking, if it strikes upward, outward or inward,
it's satire, if it strikes downward, it's bullying.
Power cannot satirize: It has too much to lose. When it comes to satire,
power is mute.
-- James Parker.
"Is Legitimate Satire Necessarily Directed at the Powerful?"
New York Times Book Review (Nov 3, 2015)
Irony and satire are favoured devices of this alt-right discourse
which has animated a toxic online counterculture and increasingly
infiltrated more mainstream media and political communications. Meme
culture has been central to this....
Their anonymity and potential to go viral has allowed them to become
engines of racism, xenophobia and misogyny.
Key to this deployment is that memes blur the boundaries between
whether something is intended as satire or not. They offer an ironic
veil for abuse - if challenged, the creator can just say "lol" or
"it's just a joke".