- Not that anyone went and busted his kneecaps... really.
Okay, I�m back. The site has been down and I had to disappear for a while as my last article pissed off the wrong person. By wrong person, I don�t mean John Ashcroft or some other Bush-Nazi regime flunky, I mean someone I admire and respect, someone who I had no intention of pissing off. So I pulled the article (a satire on the local theatre scene using unauthorized, fictional quotes from real-life Artistic Directors) and sent an apology. And this was my own decision. I�d like to state publicly that at no time did a local artistic director come to my house with a baseball bat, bust my kneecaps, smash my computer and confuse my dog with a string of double-entendres. This did not happen. I swear.
But if it did, I suppose I could understand. First of all, it would be a great way for me to get some serious pain-killing drugs and a new computer. But more importantly, it would be a lesson for me in honing the subtle art of satire. Satire is all well and good, but satire gets better and funnier the more mature and intelligent it is. Part of making satire mature and intelligent is knowing where to draw the boundaries, or more specifically, when and when not to use real names.
Generally speaking, politicians and Hollywood celebrities are fair game as they have thrust themselves into the public eye, and their career success is inexorably tied into how they play their image. It gets trickier with regional local celebrities, though. They may seem like powerful celebrities to us little people, fairly impervious to the odd joking barb, but more often than not, they�re just artists trying to promote their endeavors with a slightly bigger budget than the little guy, no more a celebrity than your average small business owner, say the independent adult-video dealer down the block, trying to make the difficult conversion to DVD with a backstock of ninety VHS copies of the �Sweater Busters� series with, of course, none of the �very special features� now offered on DVD, and the last thing they need is some joker going online and making up stories about their electronic novelty items shorting out�
But I digress. I think I was talking about theatre.
Sure, I attached highly visible disclaimers to the article; reminders that it was satire and that the quotes were fabricated, but that�s not really the issue. The issue is that the livelihoods of the people in question are at the mercy of the support of the general public. This is the same general public that's obsessed with American Idol, the same public that thinks George W. Bush is a great guy. Disclaimers don�t generally do much good to help dumbasses discern what�s satire as opposed to journalism when one considers the popularity of the Conservative Bullshit and Sensationalism Channel, better known as the Fox News Network.
I don�t like the idea of blanketing the entire public with an insult, though something�s wrong if a moron like Dubya can illegally steal the presidency, carefully dismantle environmental protection and a woman�s right to choose, make up reasons to invade a foreign country, and when it becomes clear the reasons for the war are nowhere to be found, sixty percent of the country is still so bamboozled, the Dixie Chicks need beefed-up security to play music for the normally good-natured folks in plaid whose biggest problems are usually deciding what kind of lining to put in the new truck bed. But perhaps the entire public isn�t comprised of morons, maybe we�re all just still pretty fucking shell-shocked by the fact that someone blew up a few thousand of us all at once while we were drinking our coffee trying to rub the sleep out of our eyes. Maybe we�re a little scared and susceptible to mob mentality. Or, as Agent K so eloquently said, �A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals.�
But again, I digress. My point is, while people may be generally intelligent, they don�t always read the fine print, even if it�s in big, red letters...