Isn't it ironic?

[gp]

I think irony COULD have been killed by 9-11, in a sense at least.  I
think that right at that moment everyone sort of put aside differences
and came together.  And then someone screwed up and started telling
lies and going after the wrong person and started spying on us, etc,
etc, etc, ad nauseum.  What should have been one of the moments that
brought an era of new nationalism has really only managed to divide
those people who came together on that day.  We can only be left
asking "what if?"  Well, maybe we needed a wakeup call.  Maybe we
needed that reminder that we've got to keep our eye on power and its
checks and balances, maybe we needed to realize that there are more
serious things out there than a blowjob.

Then again, I'm in what is considered a very liberal city and the
amount of people who don't read the news or even have any inkling of
what is going on in the world around them, or even in their own
country, is astounding.  There are so many people who don't want to
hear about it because it makes them feel bad, and instead of
questioning why that's the case and what they can do to try to get
their country to a point where they don't have to feel bad while
watching the news, they bury their heads in the ground.  This is an
important crowd for the people like Stewart and Colbert to aim for -
at least giving them a few glimmers of information with a smile and a
laugh.

On 1/8/07, Dave Monroe <monropolitan at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Isn't it ironic?
> Five years ago, pundits declared it dead, but 2006 saw
> the re-emergence of sarcastic humor with an
> exaggerated message
>
> By Gina Kim - Bee Staff Writer
> Published 12:00 am PST Sunday, December 31, 2006
>
>
> The reports of its death were greatly exaggerated.
>
> Pundits declared irony dead after the Sept. 11
> terrorist attacks, but five years later, not only is
> it alive -- it ruled 2006.
>
> "Given the way the world has gone, we're in more need
> of irony," says Jerry Herron, a professor of English
> and American studies at Wayne State University in
> Detroit. "What 9/11 produced was a world where
> pettifoggery, obfuscation, half-truths and double
> dealing are more rampant than ever before."
>
> Irony, the grand dame of the zeitgeist, is pop
> culture's weapon against hopelessness, experts say.
> It's a tool that transfers power to the powerless. And
> in a time of a continuing war, citizens jailed without
> charges, and a government that knows what we're
> checking out at the library and searching for on the
> Internet, it's a key to understanding what's happening
> to the world -- with a little humor, too.
>
> "The reason irony is more fun than the truth is that
> it's more fun than the truth," says Herron. "Jon
> Stewart is fun to watch because it seems to give the
> feeling of being in a club where everyone's smarter
> than everyone else. And the whole world seems to be
> pretty dumb."
>
> Along with raised eyebrows and knowing looks, irony
> puts us in the know. We become members of the sorority
> of sagacity. And it gives us some semblance of
> controlling what we're being told, experts say.
>
> But what is irony?
>
> Merriam-Webster says it's using words to mean the
> opposite of their literal meaning. But in today's
> cultural climate, irony is anything said with your
> tongue firmly planted in your cheek. It's sarcastic
> humor with an exaggerated message.
>
> "At a time when people feel they're being lied to and
> treated as though they're too stupid to get it, it
> lets you regain the claim on your own intelligence,"
> Herron says. "I'm going to tell a lie, too, but I'm
> going to tell it knowingly and as a joke."
>
> Seeds of irony
>
> Irony has existed in western culture ever since there
> was a Western culture, says author Ken Kalfus.
>
> "I'm not sure what ironic forms there are in, say,
> Afghan culture," he says. "You need a pretty
> well-developed idea of the individual. ... Irony is
> one of the first things that goes in a dictatorship."
>
> The smug smile of irony bares its teeth when
> conditions are ripe -- there's overarching
> disillusionment with the establishment and the public
> is trying to separate fact from fiction.
>
> "You can look historically at times that seem to be
> caught up in not telling the truth and irony
> flourishes," says Herron. "Like in 18th century
> England, when King George was going mad on the throne
> and the world was falling apart, irony was a thriving
> form."
>
> It came to dominate our culture in the 1970s as a way
> to question authority, says Martin Kaplan, associate
> dean of the Annenberg School for Communication at the
> University of Southern California.
>
> "It was a response to things like governmental lying
> and to the commercialization and commoditization and
> corporatization of everything," he says. "The only
> appropriate way to react to what was going on was to
> be a smart aleck and to say, 'Yeah, right,' to any
> assertion by the powerful. There was always someone
> trying to make a sucker out of you."
>
> In the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist
> attacks, Graydon Carter, editor of Vanity Fair
> magazine and co-founder of the defunct satirical Spy
> magazine, was quoted as saying, "It's the end of the
> age of irony. Things that were considered fringe and
> frivolous are going to disappear."
>
> But instead of ushering in an age of sincerity, when
> people help each other, join together and believe in a
> better world, we're more interested than ever in
> whether celebrities wear underwear on a regular basis
> and have no qualms elbowing that person reaching for
> the last PlayStation 3 on the shelf.
>
> "Many people, I was probably among them, said irony
> was dead and in the face of horrors unimaginable, the
> only appropriate response was authenticity and realism
> -- postmodern winking was no longer appropriate,"
> Kaplan says. "It probably was about six months that
> that lasted. Irony is very much alive and well."
>
> Feeding the beast
>
> It's an era in which comedian Stephen Colbert's ironic
> roast of President Bush at a White House
> correspondents dinner is now legend. And, according to
> a study by Harvard University's Institute of Politics,
> more 18- to 24-year-olds watch "The Daily Show With
> Jon Stewart" than read the print edition of a major
> newspaper.
>
> "It's become very hard to figure out what is real and
> what isn't," says stand-up comic Marc Maron. "By
> nature of that, there's more irony.
>
> "The idea that O.J. Simpson was about to publish a
> book about what he would have done had he killed his
> wife and her (friend), that should be an ironic joke,
> but it's completely real and horrifying."
>
> The lines of reality are so blurred, irony is the only
> way to formulate some type of understanding, says
> Maron, who will be on Comedy Central's "Comedy Central
> Presents" on Jan. 12.
>
> "That's why fake news is resonating much more with
> people than the real news," he says. "Because when you
> can exaggerate or be sarcastic or be ironic, the real
> message is revealed. Sometimes it takes irony to cut
> through a lot of the bull."
>
> Plus, it can sometimes drive messages home more
> efficiently than the truth.
>
> "People don't like honesty. They find it boring or too
> draining for them to engage with," Maron says. "If
> something's put across in a smug or condescending way,
> it's got some safety built into it -- you can take it
> in, laugh at it, and it assumes you're in on the
> joke."
>
> Today's irony can run the gamut from a simple
> wisecrack, knee-jerk and silly, to something much
> darker, says John Tomasic, managing editor of the
> online pop culture commentary Pop and Politics. But in
> the process, it can bring people together, as long as
> you know you're not immune.
>
> "You use it to mock, but you use it best if you're
> prepared to be mocked," he says.
>
> While irony cuts across all age groups, ethnicities
> and both genders, it is best understood by the younger
> generation, who have known irony their entire lives,
> Tomasic says.
>
> "Young people, by and large, are not confused about
> the rules of the game. They have grown up with irony.
> It's their best friend and worst enemy. It's their
> playground pal, their video game instructor, their
> movie script writer," he says. "Young people are not
> at all confused, for example, about 'The Daily Show,'
> a source of bafflement to the serious men and women in
> the skyboxes of life."
>
> Debunking myths
>
> In the months after the 9/11 attacks, author Kalfus
> began to formulate a novel in his head based on the
> media's glorification of each victim.
>
> "Everyone who was killed supposedly was a perfect
> husband, a perfect wife, a perfect father or mother.
> They were all heroes," says Kalfus. "I wanted to see
> them as people, not the way they were killed but by
> the way they lived their lives. And most probably
> lived messy lives, like the rest of us."
>
> Kalfus' book, "A Disorder Peculiar to the Country"
> (Ecco, $24.95, 256 pages), was published in July and
> is based on a couple who both thought the other spouse
> had been killed in the terrorist attacks, and both
> were secretly happy about it.
>
> "Loosely speaking, irony is a method of humor that
> deflates a cliché or deflates a particular way of
> thinking by showing that it's taking itself too
> seriously," he says. "It's just one literary method of
> making us see the world a little more clearly in the
> fog of myths."
>
> Irony never accepts anything at face value. Instead,
> it delves deeper, looks further and questions every
> premise, Kalfus says. And in the process, some form of
> the truth is discovered.
>
> "You try to puncture a cliché in a straightforward
> way, you only dent it," Kalfus says. "Irony, by
> ridiculing the supports for the cliché, can actually
> bring it down."
>
> Irony shifts the reins of power -- taking information
> from the top, altering it, changing it, and maybe in
> the process, getting closer to the truth. Like a sword
> of disillusionment, irony is a defense mechanism that
> gives the public some say in world events that are
> unfolding.
>
> "What has happened since 9/11 to promote the
> recidivism of our ironic culture was the run-up to the
> war," says USC's Kaplan. "It's hard to see what's
> going on and when you do see what's going on, to not
> be cynical about the nature of the world and the
> nature of power.
>
> "And so making fun of it, using it as the grist for
> parody, as masters like Jon Stewart and Stephen
> Colbert are doing, seems to be the best way to let the
> air out of the balloon of power."
>
> http://www.sacbee.com/107/story/99776.html
>
> __________________________________________________
> Do You Yahoo!?
> Tired of spam?  Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around
> http://mail.yahoo.com
>