Cannibalism rules.

The best satire is the most straight-faced; although they ostensibly have different goals, I'd argue that Stephen Colbert is much more successful a satirist than Jon Stewart because he plays his Stephen Colbert, Right-Wing Horse's Ass so sincerely that it feels like a real person. Similarly, Swift manages to be so deadly toward his target (maybe "targets" is more accurate) because he doesn't once tip his hand.

I won't go into specifics, but I was reading an article by an inexplicably famous conservative pundit (who, of course, claims himself to be a "libertarian") that I honestly believed was satire, a send-up of extreme right-wing, reactionary bullshit. I thought this person was mocking their own colleagues, pointing out how stupid they were. It was hilarious; I forwarded it to friends, shared its sentiments with professors, and just generally got a massive kick out of someone being so willing to embrace every horrible, hateful cliche of rabid conservative extremity.

One of the friends I had sent it to defended the guy's racist, xenophobic diatribe as some bizarre version of "This guy's just saying what everyone else is thinking." "Maybe what everyone committed in Bellevue is thinking," I thought, proud of myself for being able to discern true satire so cunningly delivered that even its target audience didn't know they were being mocked.

As you can imagine, turns out I'm the idiot. The pundit was being sincere. He meant (or purported to mean, anyway) every word. That's what I get for trolling the comments section of the Fox News website for giggles.

Anyway, I wonder how frequently someone like Swift was criticized as though he was being sincere. To be completely fair (and the devil's/cannibal's advocate), he lays out some exceptionally good arguments, many of which can be dismantled only with a king-sized helping of "BECAUSE EATING PEOPLE IS WRONG." If you take away the taboo around cannibalism and advocate strict pragmatism (as, say, certain political figures claim to do), then yeah, Swift's idea is pretty much deep-fried gold, smothered in awesome sauce, with a tall of glass of genius to wash it all down (to stick with a food metaphor).

Interestingly, I have a different friend that believes that someone like Ann Coulter isn't a pundit so much as a performance artist; she doesn't really believe anything that she says, and will one day hold a press conference and tell everyone that she was joking. I saw a post on a political message board today where someone said "You can't debate Ann Coulter because it would be like debating a Dadaist on why the sugarsnorklefickle 70,300.00 burglefish$ camera." After cleaning up the milk that shot out of my nose as soon as I read that, I wonder if any of Swift's audience (that wasn't familiar with his other work, anyway, considering its satirical nature) took him all that seriously.

All this has made me want a steak. I wonder what that says about me.

(okay, fine. The pundit was Glenn Beck. That guy's an asshole.)