For as long as anybody has held power, somebody standing nearby has been making fun of them. This is not a modern decline in standards. It is possibly the most consistent tradition in public life.
The Job Description Has Never Changed
Ancient comic playwrights mocked the generals and politicians of their own cities, by name, in front of audiences that included those politicians. This was a civic institution rather than a scandal.
Court jesters were employed, formally, at considerable expense, to say the thing nobody else in the room was permitted to say. The role existed because rulers surrounded by agreement understood the danger of it.
Newspaper cartoonists have been drawing the powerful as animals, vegetables and assorted grotesques for centuries, and every generation has described this as unprecedented rudeness.
Why Powerful People Have Always Hated It Specifically
Here is the interesting part. Political figures throughout history have tolerated criticism far better than mockery, and the reason is structural.
Criticism can be answered. You can dispute a claim, produce a counter-argument, and appear reasonable while doing so.
Ridicule cannot be answered at all. Explaining why something is not funny is the least persuasive activity available to a human being, and objecting to a joke concedes the joke landed. There is no dignified response, which is exactly why it works.
The Absurdity Is Usually Already There
The great secret of political satire, which every satirist knows and rarely admits, is how little invention is required.
The genre mostly consists of describing what is actually happening slightly more plainly than anybody else is willing to. The exaggeration people object to is frequently just the removal of the polite framing.
Deadpan works better than mockery for exactly this reason. You do not need to add a joke to something that is already ridiculous. You need only decline to pretend otherwise.
What It Is Genuinely For
Not persuasion. Satire almost never changes anybody's mind and it is a poor tool for that.
What it does is deflate. It makes the powerful ordinary, and ordinary things are much harder to be frightened of. That is a genuine public service, and it is the reason the job has existed continuously for thousands of years.
Wearing The Joke
A slogan on a shirt is the shortest form the genre has. No argument, no evidence, no paragraph ~ one line, worn in public, which either lands or does not.
It is the direct descendant of a cartoon in a newspaper and a jester in a hall. Same job. Considerably more portable.
Written by ORANGE LIAR. Thanks for reading.
