Tag Archives: satire

Self-Satire’s Medicinal Properties

In “Wonderworks,” Fletcher contends that self-satire helped Socrates deal with death.

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When News Resembles an Onion Headline

A recent case of an American man arrested for parodying a police department elicited a supportive brief from “The Onion.”

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Moliere and Religious Hypocrites

Moliere’s “Tartuffe” is a great satire of religious hypocrisy. It also shook up the 17th century French church in other ways and was banned.

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Jon Stewart Resembled Jonathan Swift

Jon Stewart stepped down from “The Daily Show” just over a year ago. At the time, he was our Jonathan Swift and, like Swift, he was not afraid to satirize satire itself when it became too puffed up.

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Grendel in Paris

As with other mass killings, “Beowulf” has lessons for the Paris massacre. Defoe and Rabelais, meanwhile, give us insight in the targeted satirical journal “Charlie Hebdo.”

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Meditation upon a Broom (April Fool!)

Swift’s “Meditation on a Broomstick” could well have been an April Fool’s joke.

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Freedom (a.k.a. Irresponsibility)

Jonathan’s Franzen’s “Freedom” is written in the John Cheever-John Updike-Tom Wolfe-Don DeLillo tradition, an up-close look at American middle class culture. But it leaves out some of the heroic struggles that are going on.

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Lit and Our Impoverished Political Culture

I’ve been thinking about how shallow and dishonest political speech has become in recent years. Then again, maybe it’s always been like this and I’m just noticing it more. When politics enter the picture, it appears that people start becoming stupid. Outlandish claims and ridiculous reasoning are either (1) accepted as factual or (2) seen […]

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Laura Ingraham Is No Jonathan Swift

Since I wrote about Swiftian satire yesterday, I was interested when a current political satirist was contrasted with Swift in yesterday’s Washington Post. Laura Ingraham has a new book out which purports to be the secret diaries of Bo, the White House dog.  In his review Steven Levingston concludes that, while the book is sometimes […]

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