Breaking: Oregon Daily Emerald has Bad Writers, Readers
So I talked a bit ago about a mediocre satire on anime that appeared in the Oregon Daily Emerald recently. I didn’t think much of it after that.
But today I got a google alert and learned that not one but TWO response articles have been posted on the site, both taking the original article at face value (did they even read it?). Unsurprisingly, neither is especially well-written, though given the writing skills of your average Internet user I guess I should be impressed that they got two comprehensible responses. Without further ado: “Columnist Uninformed about Anime” and “Claims about Anime Ridiculous.”
Now, you may have picked up on this– I am a total press whore. So naturally, I’ve written my own guest commentary about all the nonsense and submitted it. We’ll see if they actually publish it, but I figured I’d go ahead and reproduce it here, just for fun. So if you’re confused about what “satire” is, hit the jump. In retrospect, I just wish I’d thrown a “SERIOUS BUSINESS!” joke in there somewhere. Like the headline. Hmm…
Breaking: Newspaper Readers Don’t Know Satire
As a freelance writer who specializes in geek culture– particularly the anime/manga niche –I come across a lot of random anime-related articles via my Google alerts. One such alert sent me to the Oregon Daily Emerald, where I read an editorial about how anime was destroying American society. It was clear to me that the article was written as satire, although it didn’t seem likely to make its author a contender for The Onion any time soon. I got a chuckle out of seeing the piece in a relatively local paper (I live in Portland), so I posted it to my blog and moved on.
To my surprise, a couple of days later I came across another article on the Emerald via Google alerts, this one titled “Columnist uninformed about anime.” When I went to the site, I spotted a SECOND such article: “Claims about anime ridiculous.” Both of these articles took the original seriously, and neither was particularly well-written, either. Since it appears that some readers of the Emerald don’t understand the concept of satire, I will now offer a quick “Satire 101.”
Satire is a literary device “…in which human or individual vices…or shortcomings are held up to censure…the purpose of satire is not primarily humour but criticism.” (Thanks, Wikipedia.) Before you go thinking that satire is something you would only see in a literature class, consider this excellent example: “The Colbert Report.” On the show, Stephen Colbert takes on the persona of a harsh political news commentator– and takes it over the top, holding up a mirror to both news commentators and society as a whole.
A more classic example is Jonathan Swift’s 1729 essay “A Modest Proposal,” in which Swift takes the stance of an indifferent bureaucrat and again, takes his argument over the top by suggesting that the impoverished Irish should sell their children as food to the wealthy in order to make money. The result is a slicing criticism of said bureaucrats and attention paid to the plight of the Irish. And perhaps most importantly, Swift did not ACTUALLY believe that Irish children should be sold and eaten.
So, let’s jump back to the original article. Admittedly, it is not over the top enough to be spotted as satire at first glance– but surely anyone who would write a counter-article would fully read that which they were trying to counter, right? So let’s look at this line: “No matter who you are - whether you’re black, white, Asian, Latino, even Canadian - I don’t judge you by the color of your skin.” The inclusion of “even Canadian” at this list is the dead giveaway of satire to me; it reads like a joke. It even reads like the kind of joke you might hear on the Colbert Report.
Other lines that make the satire obvious include: “[Rugrats' Tommy Pickles] was like a Che Guevara for the MTV generation.” “Shows like “Flavor of Love” and “Hogan Knows Best” are watched by people who have already been stupid for years, even decades.” “This issue transcends politics, even religion. It’s the ethical dilemma of our day and age.”
So readers, before you jump to anger, think it over. Not everything you read in the paper or online is meant to be taken at face value.
Tags: letters, mainstream-media, rants
October 18th, 2007 at 11:57 am
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October 22nd, 2007 at 7:23 pm
Thanks for the tips. Looking back I guess it makes more sense as satire. I wasn’t trying to come off as angry, I just felt a little defensive, and I get preachy and think I am a comedian when I am nervous. Especially since that was the first time I had ever written anything that wasn’t a school report. If I had known that The Daily Emerald was going to print my email, which I found out they did about ten minutes ago, I wouldn’t have written the damn thing at all. I don’t claim to be a good writer (or any kind of writer other than a bad one), so it’s a new experience for me to see someone commenting in a negative way about something I wrote (most of the time my friends say, “Gee Jimmy, your the greatest!” or something along those lines). Thank you.