Satire

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Satire

Satire: a literary tone used to ridicule or make fun of human vice or weakness, often with the intent of correcting, or changing, the subject of the satiric attack.

In Taylor Mali's "The impotence of proofreading", the entire article is satire. Mali is satarizing people who use spell check, a point is trying to be made about proofreading. Mali cleverly misspell most of the article to emphasize why it is so important to know how to spell. This article is both satirical and ironic. In the paper Taylor writes, "Has this ever happened to you? You work very horde on a paper for English clash And then get a very glow raid". Right from the jump words are being spelled "ridiculing a folly or vice in order to expose or correct it." When we proofread our work, we must spell-check it as well and that is the folly in which Mali is ridiculing.

On this website, The Onion, there is an article titled "Massive Flow Of Bullshit Continues To Gush From BP Headquarters". In this article, the word oil is being replaced with the word "Bullshit". Fun is being made about BP executives; the article is quoted saying,"The toxic bullshit, which began to spew from the mouths of BP executives..." Not only is toxic oil is literally spewing all over, but so are the toxic words of BP executives. The phrase that caught my attention most in the article is "Millions of Americans reported feeling ill and disoriented upon contact with that particularly vile plume of bullshit." I found that statement to be very interesting because it can go two ways. The first way would be Americans literally felt sick after being in contact with the oil. The second way can mean they felt sick to their stomachs after hearing the BS response of the executives.

In 1882 Mark Twain wrote a speech entitle "Advice To The Youth". In this speech the advice he is giving is satire. For example, Mark Twain writes "Always obey your parents, when they are present".This advice points out what the youth do, so Twain is not advising them to do good, rather he is telling them things they already know and abide by.

"Be respectful to your superiors, if you have any, also to strangers, and sometimes to others. If a person offend you, and you are in doubt as to whether it was intentional or not, do not resort to extreme measures; simply watch your chance and hit him with a brick. That will be sufficient. If you shall find that he had not intended any offense, come out frankly and confess yourself in the wrong when you struck him; acknowledge it like a man and say you didn’t mean to. Yes, always avoid violence; in this age of charity and kindliness, the time has gone by for such things. Leave dynamite to the low and unrefined."

Teens morals and intelligence is being satirized in this excerpt from the speech. Twain sheds light on how the young reacts when they feel disrespected or offend, they resort to violence and when is confronted about it, their first response is either "I don't know" or "It was an accident, I didn't it".

NewsHoggers is an notorious site for satirical articles. Recently I read an article titled "Reading Satirical Articles Can Get You Tortured, Sent To Gitmo" by Cernig. The article is a way to show the stupidity of many people. Knowing how uptight the government is about terrorist, who in their right would look up a site about making bombs, that would be drawing major attention to themselves; it's a red flag waving."...it claims that a nuclear weapon can be made ‘using a bicycle pump’ and with liquid uranium ‘poured into a bucket and swung round’. Despite its clear satirical bent, the story led the CIA to accuse 30-year-old Mohamed, a caretaker, of plotting a dirty bomb attack, before subjecting him to its ‘extraordinary rendition programme’." The only comment I have towards this: seriously?!