The Satiric Exaggeration Of Satire

[Paul Mackin]

On Jul 2, 2006, at 10:27 AM, Dave Monroe wrote:

> Reality: The Satiric Exaggeration Of Satire
>
> I've been told by some people who saw Dr. Strangelove
> when it came out in 1964 that they didn't find it
> funny at all. It didn't seem like satiric exaggeration
> to them. It seemed like a straightforward
> representation of reality.
>
> I'm not sure they were right. Not because it was an
> exaggeration, though—but because the reality was
> actually WORSE than the movie.

on the other hand there was no General Jack D. Ripper in real life to  
start WWIII in order to protect our precious bodily fluids.

So, was reality better or worse than Gravity's Rainbow?

a. Better?  no rocket fell on Los Angels
>
b. Worse? no rocket fell on Los Angeles

c.  All of the above?



> In Dr. Strangelove, General Buck Turgidson (the George
> C. Scott character) was supposedly based on Curtis
> LeMay, who headed the Strategic Air Command during the
> fifties. LeMay was notoriously insane, known for
> musing about nuking the Russians for no reason so
> they'd be "condemned to an agrarian existence perhaps
> for generations to come." Now, here's the famous
> exchange where Turgidson advises the president to
> launch a first-strike nuclear attack on the Soviet
> Union:
>
>     GENERAL TURGIDSON: Mr. President, we are rapidly
> approaching a moment of truth both for ourselves as
> human beings and for the life of our nation. Now,
> truth is not always a pleasant thing. But it is
> necessary now to make a choice, to choose between two
> admittedly regrettable, but nevertheless
> distinguishable, postwar environments: one where you
> got twenty million people killed, and the other where
> you got a hundred and fifty million people killed.
>
>     PRESIDENT: You're talking about mass murder,
> General, not war!
>
>     GENERAL TURGIDSON: Mr. President, I'm not saying
> we wouldn't get our hair mussed. But I do say no more
> than ten to twenty million killed, tops. Uh, depending
> on the breaks.
>
> Ha ha ha! No more than ten to twenty million killed,
> tops!
>
> But when Dr. Strangelove was released, LeMay was no
> longer head of SAC. His successor was Gen. Thomas
> Power, who was so crazy he scared EVEN LeMay. Here's
> something Power said in 1960 about nuclear war:
>
>     "The whole idea is to kill the bastards...At the
> end of the war, if there are two Americans and one
> Russian, we win."
>
> That's why I say that to understand reality, you have
> to take satire and then wildly exaggerate it.
>
> http://www.tinyrevolution.com/mt/
>
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