Tag Archives: satire

On Satire

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G. K. Chesterton said: “A man is angry at a libel because it is false, but at a satire because it is true.”

But what is satire? The ever helpful Wikipedia tells us:

Satire is a genre of literature, and sometimes graphic and performing arts, in which vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement. Although satire is usually meant to be funny, its greater purpose is often constructive social criticism, using wit as a weapon.

While satire originated in Egypt, it became more fully developed in Ancient Greece where it took one of two forms: Satire after the style of Horace: humorous, self-deprecating commentary that laments contemporary follies; or after the style of Juvenal. Juvanalian satire is scornful, sarcastic and polarised.

Unbeknownst to me I have unwittingly succumbed to the influence of Rowan Williams whose ten year stint as Anglican in Chief has insidiously infused my thinking with via media muddle. I have concocted an Hegelian middle ground between Horatian and Juvenalian satire, one that is both excruciatingly funny while being bitingly sarcastic. I have empirical evidence of this: my 11 year old granddaughter roars with laughter at my musings (no, I don’t show her all of them), confirming the former and I find myself deep in the mephitic bowels of an ecclesiastical lawsuit, confirming the latter.

For those who think some of the things I have written are a trifle tasteless, I recommend a quote from Malcolm Muggeridge – whom I met briefly in the 70s and, you will be relieved to know, I irritated by asking impertinent questions:

Good taste and humour are a contradiction in terms, like a chaste whore.

The truth is out there

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I’ve always enjoyed reading science fiction from H. G. Wells to Arthur C Clark; and now the BBC:

Alien life ‘may exist among us’

Never mind Mars, alien life may be thriving right here on Earth, a major science conference has heard.

Our planet may harbour forms of “weird life” unrelated to life as we know it, according to Professor Paul Davies, a physicist at Arizona State University.

This “shadow life” may be hidden in toxic arsenic lakes or in boiling deep sea hydrothermal vents, he says.

He has called on scientists to launch a “mission to Earth” by trawling hostile environments for signs of bio-activity.

“It could be right in front of our noses – or even in our noses,” said the physicist.

After a good deal of digging, I have discovered an alien life form that lives up people’s noses.

Here it is:birdie2

Have you heard the one about the Vicar, the Lapdancer, the Muslim and the Lesbian?

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No? Then the Telegraph will enlighten you. The gullible Rev. Joanna, the vicar in question, is Anglican, naturally.

The vicar starring in a new Channel Four reality show has accused the programme’s makers of deliberately making Christians appear obsessed with sex.
“There was clearly an agenda behind making the programme designed to make Christians look obsessed with people’s sex lives and intent on imposing Christian behaviour on everyone else,” she said. “Christian behaviour is only possible after a spiritual transformation. We were encouraged to take part on the understanding that we were dealing with a group of people who genuinely wanted to embrace Christianity. But that was clearly not the case.”

Making Anglicans appear obsessed with sex is hardly an innovation of Channel 4: the notion was clearly lifted straight from Lambeth.

One has to admit, though that the “intent on imposing Christian behaviour on everyone else” while a startlingly fresh idea, is one entirely foreign to Anglicans, who are even unwilling to impose Christian behaviour on themselves.

Just when you thought it was safe to fly again

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It seems that Victoria Osteen was cleared of assault charges.

Victoria Osteen, the glamorous wife of Joel Osteen, pastor of Houston’s Lakewood Church, which has a congregation of around 40,000, is accused of slamming Sharon Brown against a bathroom door and elbowing her in the breast during the outburst.
The Continental Airlines stewardess is demanding an apology and 10 percent of Mrs Osteen’s net worth in damages for the anxiety and suffering she claims the incident caused. The resulting distress included a crisis of faith, post traumatic stress and haemorrhoids, Ms Brown alleges.

The only thing that is even mildly interesting in this 21st C. litigious sciamachy is: how often are haemorrhoids induced by an elbow in the breast? I want to know.

My curiosity about the journey from poke to pile is not anatomical prurience: if, heaven forbid, it proves reversible, the answer could avert an impending deluge of chest-pain lawsuits brought about by sitting on the punishingly hard pews of the average Anglican church.

Mark Driscoll on Harsh Language

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For a different view – not one I particularly agree with – there is this from Andrew Brown at the Guardian:

My great-grandfather drank infrequently but seriously, as a respectable Protestant in county Fermanagh should. Sessions involved a bottle of whiskey, some suitable masculine company and a little ritual to start the evening off. He would retire to his study with bottle and guest, remove the cork from the bottle and throw it on the fire. While it burned, they would drink the first toast, which was always the same: “Fuck the Pope!” Then the glasses would be drained.

There were few men he liked to drink with. One thought worthy was the local Catholic priest. This raised a difficulty with the toast, which was solved by the priest waiting discreetly outside the study until it was time for the second glass. After that there would be no toasts or talk offensive to his ears, and he was warmly welcomed.

How very different the conduct of religious discussions on the internet. On the web the participants are often sober and they spare no pains to offend and insult one another, even when there is nothing at stake. I nearly wrote “nothing but prestige” but prestige in whose eyes? Who is watching? The strange, weightless intimacy of online communication has enabled complete strangers to hate each other passionately within minutes. This has had measurable effects in the real world. In the US, for instance, the breakup of the Anglican Communion has already resulted in some huge and juicy lawsuits and will certainly result in many more as conservative parishes try to remove their churches from the liberal central body. The schism could never have happened without the internet, which allowed each side to see exactly what the other was up to, and then deliberately to misunderstand it.