Manifesto

I am pleased to introduce "The Satire Spy," a new blog where I plan to write about satire in popular media. As often as possible, I will seek to analyze the themes and methods of satirists like Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, The Onion, South Park and others. I will attempt to trace the roots of their criticisms and the way they communicate them. Hopefully, my posts will be timely, relevant and interesting, as well as serving as a jumping off point for discussions about the various opinions and methods.

What are my qualifications? Well, I took one class on satire with Jonathan Gray, associate professor of communications at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of Watching With The Simpsons: Television, Parody, And Intertextuality. I took another class, this one on the poet-satirists of the 17th and 18th centuries, with Michael Suarez, S.J., now director of the Rare Book School at the University of Virginia. Of course, this means absolutely nothing, because I haven't written any books or earned a Ph.D; but I do watch a lot of television and read a lot of funny political writing.

The thing is, you don't really need a Ph.D to know what satire is all about (at least that's what I'm going to try to convince you of). What you really need is a keen eye and a desire to dig a little deeper to find out what's really going on, what the creators are really getting at. Besides, if you need a Ph.D to understand someone's satire, then it isn't very good, because one of the essences of popular satire is that it speaks truth to power for the masses. Now I certainly qualify as a member of the masses.

Basically, I want this blog to be a chance for us to discuss what these political guys dressed up as funny men are talking about. Because often times, they know a lot more about what's really going on than all the MBAs, PhDs and JDs combined. Let's try to figure out what they know, and what should change about it.