What's so funny 'bout political satire?

I got an email from my ex the other day. The headline announced, "I found him!" My immediate thought was that she'd found a replacement for the bum she'd been married to, or at least had some kind of religious conversion. [Please note: that was a joke.]

Actually, what she was referencing was a discussion we'd had years ago, listening to Tom Lehrer songs. I'd made a comment about how there weren't any good political satirists anymore.

The story goes that Lehrer quit writing songs when Henry Kissinger won the Nobel Peace Prize, claiming that satire was dead. He actually had dropped out of the musical business a few years earlier because he was bored with touring and playing the same songs night after night. He did say something about Kissinger and political satire and obsolescence, but it wasn't the direct cause of his quitting the business.

Anyway, the reason for my ex's email was her discovery of Roy Zimmerman, a songwriting political satirist from the San Francisco Bay Area. The guy writes funny stuff and comes from the same general part of the political spectrum as Lehrer did. I went out and got an album by him. If you liked Lehrer you'll like Zimmerman. More on him later.

What's funny and not funny in the world of politics has been on the front burner this week, mostly because of The New Yorker's cover cartoon of the Obamas in the White House. It has Barack dressed as a Muslim militant giving the terrorist fist jab to his wife, who is made out like Angela Davis. Above the fireplace is a picture of bin Laden, in the fireplace is a flag burning. The title of it is "The Politics of Fear." You'd think from the absurd collection of images and the title that it would be pretty obvious that the drawing was mocking the Republican fear mongers. The problem, apparently, was that some righties were using the cartoon as an illustration of their vision of the truth, ignoring the satire entirely. As if Tom Lehrer's song "Pollution" justified lowering the clean water standards.

So I guess that the first question would be: Is it satire if the people you're making fun of don't get it?

Over at Hullabaloo there was a mighty discussion going on. Things like "cognitive dissonance" were being thrown around, people were charging the cartoonist and The New Yorker with being racist. I'd been pulled into a heated discussion there last spring over the "pimp" controversy. A talking head on MSNBC made a snide comment about the unseemliness of the Clinton's "pimping" their daughter to do political rallies. The outrage and charges of sexism were amazing. And any attempt to disagree condemned you to being a sexist yourself. Now this is the Year 2008. "Pimping" has been used by the underclass and under 25s for years as a synonym for "selling." The usage has become so common that there is a TV show on MTV about accessorizing cars called "Pimp My Ride," competing with CMT's "Make My Truck Shiny." [Note: That was a joke.] People posting at Hullabaloo were saying How dare these people accuse Bill and Hillary of prostituting Chelsea! I tried to explain that it was a figure of speech, not a literal accusation, to no avail. If that MSNBC talking head really wanted to smear Chelsea and her parents he only had to mention that she is working for a hedge fund on Wall Street. [Note: that was kind of a joke.]

In fact, looking at a distance at Hillary Clinton's campaign it takes on a two-tiered shape. On one level it was all outrage, with supporters and staff ferreting out anything that could in any way be interpreted as sexist. More discreetly, her hitpeople kept feeding all sorts of "oppo research" to her friends in the media. The result was an exhausting, humorless campaign which ended when her suggestion that she should maybe stick around because something might happen like what happened to Bobby Kennedy didn't pull in enough voters. I suspect that some of the same people who had no humor then still have no humor.

Not that lack of a funnybone is all on the Left. Al Franken, the kind of dweeby, smarmy wonk who used to host a show on Air America Radio, isn't doing well in his race against Norm Coleman in the Minnesota senatorial race. If you recall, Franken used to be a writer and occasionally appeared as a comic on "Saturday Night Live." Coleman's people have been uncovering old comedy routines to smear Franken. For example, the one about how Franken praised the internet for helping his son research his fifth grade paper on bestiality. Talk about literal. Good Minnesotans don't like children looking at bestiality on the internet!

What is becoming very clear in this campaign is that there are a lot of people walking the streets who don't get satire. And that's why Rob Schneider is a millionaire.

Not only don't a lot of people get satire, but a lot of people count on people not getting, well, anything. When the Reagan campaign used Bruce Springsteen's "Born In The USA" as theme song at political rallies they knew that the song was about a returning war vet who's life was screwed up. They just felt sure that their target audience wasn't going to get past the chorus, "Born in the USA!" And they were right. If Bill O'Reilly held up the cartoon on the cover of The New Yorker, he's not laughing at himself; and he's counting on his audience not getting that the joke is on him. Or them.

Thom Hartmann, who's usually pretty good at sussing out things, climbed on the outrage train too, saying that the cartoon wasn't "satire" but "caricature," and therefore was making fun of the Obamas. Like I say, he usually gets it, but he missed on the JFK thing too.

Caricature: I used to listen to the Stephanie Miller Show on radio in the mornings until Girlfriend complained that it was racist. I'd never noticed. Turns out there's a comedian who has an "Asian" voice. If North Korea's dictator is in the news you get this guy doing the "Hey Joe, why you so smart 'bouta..." stock Asian voice. If Myanmar is in the news, you get "Hey Joe, why you so smart 'bouta..." If there's someone Chinese in the news... Or Japanese. You get the point. I believe that the Firesign Theatre had the same Asian voice fatigue. Maybe if the routines on SMS relied less on caricature and more on substance they would have been funnier and less offensive.

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So what's funny? Well, Roy Zimmerman is funny. You can catch him on You Tube.I just picked up a copy of his album, "Faulty Intelligence." It's available on Amazon. The songs are well-arranged, with a full band and backup singers. If you miss Tom Lehrer, try Roy Zimmerman.

Here's a song of mine of some small satirical value, written back in the 80s when the remains of MIAs were being returned from Vietnam and many people were clinging to the hope that there were thousands of soldiers being held in camps there. You know, the Rambo thing. Maybe the song was a little too cutting.

Download mystery_prison.mp3

Maybe not so funny. Nobody likes my early 90s rap song chronicling the fall of the Soviet Union as told by an athlete looking for hooking up with babes on other Olympic teams ("Those Communist chicks with their steroid fix are overpowerin' sometimes, and small talk is off-the-wall talk when the government controls their minds..."). And yet I thought it was brilliant.

Comments

[Sis]

Satire is a lost concept. Less Aristophanes, more Plautus these days.

One right-winger chortled that it appeared that the left was more indignant about that magazine cover than the right--who--well--never heard of the magazine and have never even seen it on a periodical kiosk, let alone READ it. So it appeared that the cartoon was taking swipes at the right (who weren't likely to even be exposed to it) and ended up insulting Obama. And he kvetched.

Such is the trickiness of satire.

I see that there is a local group in Sarasota that is performing Lehrer songs at an 11pm show--"An Evening Wasted With Tom Lerher". Even Boston Legal used one of Lerhrer's songs in an episode last season. He appears to have made something of a comeback.

Catch the JibJab cartoon online. Satirizes everything political. Wet-your-pants funny.