{"id":30252,"date":"2019-09-12T23:29:57","date_gmt":"2019-09-13T04:29:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/?p=30252"},"modified":"2019-09-12T23:29:57","modified_gmt":"2019-09-13T04:29:57","slug":"briefly-satire-should-make-fun-of-ideas-not-just-call-your-opponents-stupid","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/?p=30252","title":{"rendered":"Briefly: Satire should make fun of ideas, not just call your opponents stupid"},"content":{"rendered":"

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I really enjoy political satire. You might remember that my first short film<\/a> was political satire. But there\u2019s a trend in political satire today which I find disturbing \u2014 and this graphic is a great example. This fake promotional ad for Fox News was placed on New York City subways recently. When I found it on social media, people who lean to the political left were smirking and enjoying this attack on their \u201cstupid\u201d opponents. But this isn\u2019t satire. It\u2019s just a mean-spirited attempt to say, \u201cThose who agree with me are smarter than you idiots who watch Fox News.\u201d It\u2019s a smirking, nasty attack which makes no point other than to claim superiority over people for the sin of disagreeing. I absolutely loathe Fox News, but I also loathe CNN and MSNBC and all the other media outfits who pander to partisans and intentionally try to divide people. If you want to show that you\u2019re a small-minded bigot who doesn\u2019t understand his opponents, just pretend your enemies are all stupid and evil. They\u2019re not. The truth is a lot more complicated. Ideas are ripe for satire, but that involves creative thinking, not just nasty personal attacks.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I really enjoy political satire. You might remember that my first short film was political satire. But there\u2019s a trend in political satire today which I find disturbing \u2014 and this graphic is a great example. This fake promotional ad for Fox News was placed on New York City subways recently. When I found it Keep Reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[556],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-30252","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-briefly","7":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1x9iR-7RW","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30252","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30252"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30252\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30254,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30252\/revisions\/30254"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidmcelroy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}