satire [was re: meshugginah...]

[Vaska]

Joaquin Stick writes: 
>> The point of satire is that it
>> always claims to have got it right: without such a claim, however implicit
>> it might be, it has no leg to stand on.
>
>I'm not so sure about this. It seems to me the point of satire is not
>necessarily the suggestion that "I've got it right" but "you've got it
>wrong/absurd". 

It's the latter stance that implies: my satiric view of XYZ has it right --
no? Otherwise it all boils down to some personal peeve, or an easy sneer, or
some  variety of resentiment, envy, jealousy, etc.  

>Does the satirist really have the suggestion of an
>alternative reality in mind 

Not at all -- or not necessarily.  

>or is it just the task of the satirist to
>point out the folly of the object of his/her satire?

Yes.  And in pointing out someone's folly, aren't you also laying a claim to
have got *that* part of it right: that it is actually foolish or base or
whatever. And so deserving of ridicule or censure.  If you aren't, then it's
simple derision with no substance to it at all.  

Take Swift, for example: nine times out of ten he's terrific, and does get
it right in the sense I'm using here.  Then you come across that piece about
a woman's breast, seen as if under a magnifying glass, and you suddenly
realize it's no longer satire but some private and sad neurosis of his own.
At which point his writing, or that part of it rather, becomes about Swift
himself, having lost any intelligible relation to the world around him.

Hope this makes my original statement a bit clearer.

Vaska