I’ve always loved satire, SNL, Stephen Colbert, the Daily Show. I’ve felt comedians have held the great platform of political truth. It wasn’t until I listened to Malcom Gladwell’s podcast, the Satire Paradox, that I got a different perspective. Malcom argues that satire runs on the ‘ambiguous’ platform, not in fact a political left or right platform. Satire allows the listener/reader to fill in the gaps with their own learned intellect. This essentially means that you see exactly what you want to see, as opposed to an idea that the satirical commentator is trying to convey. This phenomenon called ‘motivated cognition’ or ‘biased perception’ is how satire can get overwhelmingly great reviews across party, economic, and racial lines.
I received a first hand account of this after getting this ‘satirical’ poem published. People read the same words and came out with opposite reactions based on what they wanted to see in the meaning of ambiguous words (I had someone respond angrily about publishing right wing propaganda…) I suppose the analogy to the book of Revelation (what I thought was a unambiguous reference to the apocalypse) went straight over their heads… or maybe they just wanted to see something to argue about in a volatile pre-election 2020 America. Perhaps satire, while entertaining, isn’t the best art form to make people feel uncomfortable.

Link to Malcom Gladwell’s Podcast, ‘the Satire Paradox’: https://www.pushkin.fm/episode/the-satire-paradox/