Safire and satire

William Safire (1929-2009, pictured). Wikipedia calls him an American author, columnist, journalist, lexicographer and presidential speechwriter perhaps best known as a long-time syndicated political columnist for the New York Times [1]. For the obvious reason, satire reminds me of Safire. Dictionary.com defines satire as ‘the use of irony, sarcasm, ridicule or the like in exposing, denouncing or deriding, vice, folly etc’ [2]. I thought of William Safire early this week when I read this item on CiF Watch – which monitors and exposes anti-semitism on the Guardian newspaper’s ‘Comment is Free’ blog [3]. It’s titled: ‘Israeli NGO’s [sic] preparing Flotilla from Ashdod to Dublin*’ [4]. The superscript asterisk flags to readers too dumb to otherwise realise, that the piece is satire. It uses irony, sarcasm and ridicule to expose, denounce and deride the vice, folly and evil of the Viva Palestina [5] flotilla that sailed towards Gaza in mid 2010, and which included the Mavi Marmara. The satirical CiF Watch piece starts: ‘Israeli NGOs horrified by the developing humanitarian crisis in Ireland have organized a flotilla called Viva Dublina. And it rolls – or perhaps more aptly, sails – on from there. It’s brilliant. I heartily recommend it. It exposes Viva Palestina’s motives and hypocrisy in a way no serious analysis could. I think if William Safire had read it, he’d be jealous he didn’t write it.
H/t Elder of Ziyon [6].

No Laughing Matter! Or is it?

Sometimes, indeed often, things are such that you feel like crying. They’re so absurd and irrational. And stupid. But then the thought occurs to you: crying won’t help. How can it? Wallowing in self-pity’s equally absurd and irrational. And stupid. So what do you do then? Well you could try laughing. Yes – laughing. Because humour can cut right to the core of things. To help us see things more clearly. It often takes silliness here to highlight silliness there.

Enter No Laughing Matter! It’s a shadowy comedy outfit. A google search turns up precious little information about it. I can’t find out when it started, where it’s based, or how big it is. And the ‘about us’ page of its website’s not very enlightening [1]. Though it shows us its motto/credo: ‘Laugh and the world laughs with you’. And its logo: (I think) a finger with hair and a smiley drawn on it. So far NLM!’s put out three short videos – ‘The One About Iran’, The One About Hamas’ and ‘The One About The UN’ – each with the same format: a woman interviewing a man. You can see the videos here [2] and the annotated scripts here [3]. They’re hilarious. And incisive. Satire’s indeed a powerful tool.

I wish you success, NLM! What you’re doing can’t hurt. And it just might help. It just might. I for one hope it does.