Dan Savage Finally Understands Satire
Well, this piece certainly is interesting. We recognize it as satire because we know the cultural context that is Dan Savage. We only wish that Mr. Savage would have done the same about a month or four ago when he royally skewered Garrison Keillor, who wrote his own bit of satire in this Salon piece.
At first, we couldn't help but giggle at his error in judgment. Perhaps he didn't understand Mr. Keillor's cultural context? Keillor's old-timey, radio sketch comedy, for example, simultaneously employs and skewers all manner of stereotype every second it is on the air. Unlike the current mode of the day which involves lots of screaming, self-righteousness, cussing, and blogviating, though, Mr. Keillor diffuses them with subtle, and often self-effacing, humor.
After thinking about it, though, we got a little angry that Mr. Savage let his energies loose on one of the least deserving targets of his vitriol, especially when there are plenty of real targets. After all, when Dan Savage attacks Garrison Keillor for alleged homophobia, Ann Rove has already won. This is the problem with blogs in general: their knee-jerk nature really emphasizes the jerk sometimes.
The problem with doing satire is that context is hard to transmit to someone unfamiliar with your work. This is especially true if you're a relative unknown like us--we've personally had our writing misinterpreted. It's also true when you are crossing genres and (pop-) cultural borders. Since nobody under 62 (except this Seattlest) gets Mr. Keillor's humor, we understand Mr. Savage's ignorance. Understanding such context takes time, far longer than blog time; although in the amount of time Mr. Savage took to edit his post(s), he could have done some cursory research.
Of course, this whole problem is exacerbated by the level of subtlety one employs in one's writing. The more subtle the satire, the more likely one is to be misinterpreted and attacked. Unfortunately, subtlety is completely lost on the American audience. It's not our fault, though, so don't feel bad about it. As soon as we told the Brits that we were packing our things and taking our business to Walgreen's, we started losing the Brits' acute mastery of literary devices. Unless we are tediously bludgeoned by the obvious these days, we just don't get it.
Having said that, we understand Mr. Savage being a bit sensitive, especially on a deeply personal issue like parenting. What with the civilly-destructive ideologies of the Failed Bush Administration, and the caustic venom of people like Don Imus, it's not difficult to take umbrage. But c'mon... step out of Planet Broadway every now and then.
What we are saying is: people, shut up and quit flying off the buttplug! Do some research into pop culture and make certain that the person you are smearing with journalistic santorum is truly deserving. For example, we could have gotten all huffy and serious about Mr. Savage's "war on teenage sex" post, blathering on about how so misunderstood teenagers are and how adults need to remember what it was like as teens and perhaps even making a crappy analogy about forced, hormonal sterilization of The Gays. But that would have betrayed how far we had missed the boat. By the same token, then, Savage's attack betrayed just how clueless he was about Keillor's tone.
Given his latest post, though, we're glad to see that he's starting to understand satire.
