Viswanathan K's Thoughts

Garry Trudeau recently wrote an article about what he calls the “abuse of satire” . He starts with what satire was meant to be: “Traditionally, satire has comforted the afflicted while afflicting the comfortable. Satire punches up, against authority of all kinds, the little guy against the powerful. Great French satirists like Molière and Daumier always punched up, holding up the self-satisfied and hypocritical to ridicule.” He contrasts the above with Charlie Hebdo , the French publication that lampooned Mohammed and whose office got attacked in Paris in January: “By punching downward, by attacking a powerless, disenfranchised minority with crude, vulgar drawings closer to graffiti than cartoons, Charlie wandered into the realm of hate speech, which in France is only illegal if it directly incites violence.” And so he concludes: “It’s always worth asking this question: Is anyone, anyone at all, laughing? If not, maybe you crossed it.” All of the above would make sense,...

During one of his (as usual) awesome closing arguments in Boston Legal , Alan Shore asked: “ When did religion get such a good name, anyway? Be it the Crusades, the Reformation genocides, the “troubles” in Northern Ireland, the Middle East, mass slaughters supposedly in the name of Allah, and then, of course, the obligatory reciprocal retribution.” Religion now has such a bad name that even Buddhism isn’t spared. The wickedly satirical The Onion posted this hilarious article on how a Buddhist extremist cell (yup, you read that right) vows to unleash (hold your breath) tranquility on the West! The group’s leader, Tsuglag Rinpoche, declared: “In the name of the Great Teacher, we will stop at nothing to unleash a firestorm of empathy, compassion, and true selflessness upon the West… we will bring the entire United States to its knees in deep meditation.” Criticizing the US for “blatant disregard of karmic balance within the universe”, he vowed that his “ soldiers would cont...