The Tall Tale
Stories stretched just past believable ~ exactly how we like them.
The Daily Fib
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The Slogan Is The Shortest Form Of Political Comedy
Political comedy comes in many lengths. An hour of stand-up. A newspaper column. A single panel cartoon. -
What Satire Cannot Do, And Why It Matters
A defence of political comedy has to be honest about its limits, or it is just advertising. -
The Comic Value Of A Very Serious Man
Comedy has understood something for a very long time that keeps being rediscovered. The funniest possible character is not the clown. -
Every Political Scandal Follows The Same Five Steps
Watch enough public controversies and you stop being surprised by any of them, because they run on rails. -
The Complete Guide To The Non Apology
The genuine apology is a simple thing. Somebody says what they did, says it was wrong, and says what happens now. Three parts, under twenty words, extremely rare in public life. -
Trust Nothing Orange And Other Useful Rules
Everybody needs a small set of rules for deciding what to believe, because checking everything properly is not available to anybody with a job. -
The Political Speech Contains No Sentences
Try an experiment during the next political speech you happen across. Listen for a sentence that makes a specific, checkable claim about something that will happen. -
Satire Has Always Been The Oldest Job In Politics
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.
Latest Articles
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Satire You Can Sip: Welcome to the Tumblers Collection
I have a theory about why the best political jokes land at a slow pace. A rant gets tuned out before the second sentence. But a wine tumbler sitting quietly on the table (lid on, holding its 12 ounces like it has all the time in the world) gets read, re-read, and then somebody across the room grins. That grin is the whole business model of the Tumblers collection, and it does its work before you even say a word. -
Pour a Glass and Let the Cartoon Do the Talking
Some conversations go better with a glass in hand. Wine Lovers is the Orange Liar collection built for exactly those evenings: lidded stemless wine tumblers in clean white, each one wearing a character from our menagerie in full orange glory. It is satire you can sip from, made for book club, the back porch and the kind of dinner party where everyone ends up in the kitchen by nine. -
Whiskers, Neckties and a Very Busy Rat Pack
Rats are survivors. They find their way into every building, every basement and every back room, and they are gone before anyone thinks to check the pantry. The Rat Collection celebrates that particular talent with a whole pack of rodents in business attire, each one wearing the same orange swoop and the same red tie, and each one looking suspiciously comfortable wherever he has landed.