Advice to Sarah Palin |
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CreateSpace: 2010 |
July 2010 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The civil virtues are supported by humor
Politics, of course, is the art or science of governing: that is, how we manage our society. A civil society, such as our modern Western societies aspire to remain, requires among other virtues an atmosphere of civility — an attitude worth keeping to the fore. If civility is almost essential to maintaining the freedoms of a civil society, following in armed support is the virtue of humor — not only a lightener of mood, but a great optical cleanser aiding our perspective upon this strange world in which we find ourselves. In this light, we have Advice to Sarah Palin From the Know-It-Alls: A Satirical Journey by Nicole O. Coulter. The book's format purports to be a series of advice columns, written by an elite Know-It-All pundit to Governor Sarah Palin and her supporters. Coulter avows that a key model for her inspiration is C. S. Lewis' The Screwtape Letters, advice letters from a senior devil to a junior one, sharing efficient methods for the diabolical seduction and moral corruption of souls. Coulter's advisor here sometimes resembles a single-minded group, the royal "we" of insider knowledge and political sophistication. Similarly, instead of a single recipient of private letters we have the general audience for published columns. Some of these advice columns appeared originally at Conservatives for Palin, a website whose readers are much more than averagely informed about Sarah Palin. Certainly some of the "advice", and hence some of the humor, depends on how much the reader already knows about Palin, and especially how closely the reader is aware of the propaganda war against her. But not much background is needed to enjoy Advice to Sarah Palin From the Know-It-Alls: if we bring a general knowledge of the American political scene, and a portion of the gift of laughter, the satire is easy to appreciate. As the anti-Palin propaganda campaign has not died away after the 2008 election, but continued and escalated into new heights of invective and depths of vitriol, observers who are striving to be objective may have wondered just what is going on — and why such desperate bitterness, and such blatant fabrications? Perhaps the politically-correct insiders who dispense their advice to the masses, the Know-It-Alls as Coulter dubs them, worriedly sense that for all their escalation, they are losing ground. Losing ground to what, we may ask. What is the target of propaganda, what is its contrary? The simplest answer is that the target and contrary is truth. The dissemination of truth should require neither insults nor falsehoods. What then is the purpose of satire? Well, to entertain of course, and in the process subtly to tweak our too-often lazy thinking processes, our naive acceptance of what the Know-It-Alls dispense as though it were truth. Perhaps the definitive function of satire is not to give us fresh information — although that may happen by the way — as to sharpen and focus our awareness. This surely is helped by a leavening of humor. Let's look at a couple of snippets from the Know-It-Alls' advisories. First, on their surprise on 29 August 2008 at Senator John McCain's choosing Governor Palin for the Republican Vice-Presidential nomination:
On the Know-It-Alls' fusillade of mockery:
The serious undercurrent here is that of course such Marxist-compulsive classification and divisiveness has been and remains one of the greatest and most successful threats to freedom in the modern Western nations. There's a lot of fine material in Advice to Sarah Palin From the Know-It-Alls that I'll just hint at: the Republican elite's Stockholm Syndrome; the use of fish sticks in an economy; the GOP Spelling Bee; how racial politics comes around again, and why; and the parlor game "Are You Smarter Than Sarah Palin?" Do not miss the classically simple chapter, "What Sarah Palin Is Doing Right". No elite conclave of Know-It-Alls could possibly have summed this up in a fashion more clear, concise, objective, and even serene. It isn't likely that we would read too far along this sequence of advice without being clear that it is, in fact, satire. It is an evolutionary journey, and should you begin to lose your bearings among the Know-It-Alls' advice, go back quietly to the beginning and re-read and re-think and chuckle — we won't tell. Much of the book is fictional of course, including for instance the "fantasy responses" of certain real people. But much of it is real, and this makes its impact so much stronger, even when its humor must be met by our amazed head-shaking at the follies of political mankind. Coulter delineates at the end what has been real and what she has supplied. Nicole Coulter's good-humored and witty style in Advice to Sarah Palin From the Know-It-Alls is by turns advisory, accusatory, or deploring — while being disconcerting, informative, and funny. An enjoyable journey through the American political scene.
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© 2010 Robert Wilfred Franson |
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