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Satirising satire?
Posted by: Ed Gillespie
If satire is all about 'deriding folly through sarcasm, caustic irony or wit' then what happens if the subject of your satire is in itself satirical?
Well, I'm not (quite) threatening to disappear up my own bum in some self-referential cycle of rumination, but a piece by that well known climate change sceptic Dominic Lawson in Friday's Independent made me laugh my own posterior clean off. The article, entitled 'Some hints for saving the world' is about a supposedly green blog and forthcoming book 'Can I recycle my granny?' by 'eco-activist' Ethan Greenhart.
Lawson lays into Ethan's book with keen, satirical relish, bravely exposing the tortured soul of material guilt, Luddite mentality, hysterical science and earnest prosletysing that he perceives to be the fundamental problems underlying modern environmentalism...and which thus hold back what he considers to be 'progress'. You can almost sense Lawson's poorly repressed glee as he seizes on the loopy lunacy of Ethan's tome and his hippy, hairshirt moralising that includes extreme references to avoiding the use of condoms in Africa and AIDS being an effective mechanism of population management.
The only problem with all this is that Ethan Greenhart is an entirely fictional character, invented by the Living Marxist gang at www.spiked.com. Ethan's regular column on the website is a crude caricature of sustainable thinking specifically aimed at discrediting and ridiculing the environment movement i.e. it's a satire. Albeit a fairly obvious and slightly tawdry one and in a similarly deliberately contrarian vein to the 'creative' outputs of other members of the Living Marxism clique such as that now legendary piece of balanced broadcasting 'The Great Global Warming Swindle'.
So, going back to Mr Lawson's article, I don't know what you call it when you satirise a satire, but it seems clear that Dominic didn't realise he was doing this (probably because the book reinforced his own prejudiced views). What next? Ironical irony? This might be where we shag ourselves through runaway climate change whilst being acutely aware of what we're doing yet simultaneously denying and obfuscating the obvious at the same tme.
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Ah, gotta love that. People read what they want to read, and hear what they want to hear. We're a stubborn species, really.
This is just the latest garbage from Lawson. It's in his genes. He should be writing for The Telegraph really . . .
I think that the Spiked satire is quite good. The notion of 'being ethical' really gets on my nerves. Dealing with climate change is about economics and risk management. Surprised that the Independent printed the erroneous piece. Amateur journalism.