Media Notes from All Over (Belatedly)

Media Notes from All Over (somewhat belatedly)

First, about that New Yorker cover: to quote Steve Martin, comedy isn't pretty. As a satire practitioner myself, I have to ask: who's going to define what's acceptable and what isn't? It's a conundrum as old as Lenny Bruce, whose "black humor" tested the boundaries of Acceptable Humor Standards (where, say, "Disney" has a score of 100 AHS and that joke told in Aristocrats 0.08) of the time. (Christ and Moses...)

If the New Yorker cover is unacceptable satire, who decides what comes next? "Free speech," Abbie Hoffman said, "is the right to shout 'theater' in a crowded fire." For goodness' sake, Jonathan Swift wrote an essay about eating children!

If the New York Times or CNN had commissioned the drawing, ethicists would rightly grumble, but this is the New Yorker we're talking about--the grandfather of all humor magazines. (Stop reading this blog and go find some Robert Benchley. Please.) You try being clever 52 times a year. Satire, as the saying goes, is what closes on Saturday night. It's hard to please everybody.

Nonetheless, trying as hard as it possibly could to broaden its appeal, the Washington Post has been soiling itself all week with the 12-part Chandra Levy story. The average installment has run about 900 words. 900 words! The Post's prize-worthy series about lobbyists Cassidy and Associates clocked in at over four thousand per. What possible reason could the Post have for stretching this salacious story over 12 days, plus Internet extras? I can't imagine...

Comments

[charley0008]

This whole issue over the New Yorker cover & all the writers and humorist jumping to the magazine's defense, illustrates what drives me crazy about 'the many' given access to a pen or a pulpit.
They don't get either the irony or the obvious. They treat criticism of the New Yorker as if it is some ominous threat to 'satire', ' all things intended to be funny' and even, (incredibly) a threat to 'free speech'! At "The Nation' , Katrina Vanden Heuvel jumps to the defense (and the extreme far corner) by pointing out that there must be 'a place in society for satire', as though criticism of the New Yorker spells a death knell for all.
Now we have William, whose argument, as best as I can tell, is that even failed 'satire' is acceptable in the New Yorker based on some bizarre notion that they have a grandfathered 'satire clause.'
Listening to this, you would think that no satirist had ever failed or been booed off a stage!
In addition the irony of defending the New Yorkers on the basis of free speech, while treating our right to tell them it sucked, as a threat to free speech, is pure chutzpah.
When did 'boo's' cease to be covered under right of free speech?
Talk about irony and satire!
And they think we don't have a sense of humor!