When Satire Fails

Sunday, February 24, 2013

This was back in 2007, but it still ought to be shared.

I get that they're making fun of conservative political cartoons here, but did they have to do it at librarians' expense? I happen to enjoy reading satire (and occasionally trying to write it), and the fact that they propagated one myth to shatter another makes me really sad. I normally love the Onion, too.

Now, I'm sharing this here because I'm currently in grad school to become an archivist and because quite a few of my characters in Londinium work as satirists. I have to point out why this doesn't quite work satirically. When you write or draw satire, you're trying to show things how they really are by making fun of them using exaggeration. In this case, they're trying to make fun of conservative political cartoons. Unfortunately, they've done this by representing another group of people incorrectly - librarians. 

Satire doesn't work so well when you show one myth to be false whilst simultaneously continuing to convince the public that another myth is real.