Rejected (sadly) satirical article for my school's newspaper

[the last donut of the night]

So my friend, being a smart guy, responded to the Tea Party bullshit in the US in a tasty way: through biting humor. He wrote this piece for our school's paper, but like most liberal media pieces, it found it "too offensive" and that he had to put a disclaimer that it was actual satire (as if nobody would get that). Hopefully you'll like it; he's given me permission to put this up:


Lament of a Good American
By Rushbeck Moneybags

Save the USA! Impeach Obama Today! This is what I’m hearing on the street
corners of cities and towns across America this very minute! Concerned, American
citizens are seeking justice and demanding our America back from those highfalutin, neo-
liberal monarchs that are Pelosi, Reid & Obama. I beg you, America, stand up on your
hind legs and fight back these beasts! We need to take back America, take it back in time!
Where have the values of our founding fathers, once so deeply cherished, gone? What
ever happened to our safe public streets and just taxation? I ask you, America, where is
the next George Washington? This is the question I am asked most by good patriots
across the country. Our country now is unrecognizable. We need to take America back to
a white, Christian republic.
Remember the old America: where good, white men were in charge, and
immigrants knew their place? The Obama regime is tearing asunder the America you and
I grew up in. The good patriot Bill O’Reilly has said, “the values you grew up with, I
grew up with, are going to be under siege”.
I am proud of our capitalist, democratic country, and I do not apologize of my
way of life. Yet Comrade Obama and his Czars have seen fit to impose tenets of
communism into our economy, politics, and culture! Obama’s first move has been
Obamacare. As Sarah Palin has pointed out, Obamacare will “leave us less secure, more
in debt, and more under the thumb of big government.” Ms. Palin and other common-
sense-conservatives are right: why do I have to pay for the indigent’s healthcare? If you
do not have the money to pay for your own healthcare, then you do not deserve it. Poor
people are poor for a reason: they do drugs, get drunk, and fraud social services. Why
should my hard-earned cash be forcibly redistributed to lazy people or even worse:
violent, criminal illegal aliens?
Violent, criminal illegal aliens are inundating the borders for the sole purpose of
producing offspring so that the children can become American citizens. It’s called the
squeeze and scram. These “anchor babies” are planted in America so that it is harder for
their illegal parents to be sent back to wherever they came from.
President Obama, or should I say Barack Hussein Obama II (where’s the birth
certificate???), has successfully brainwashed many in America into believing that his
radical ideas are actually more moderate. Totalitarian dictatorship, high taxes, and the
spread of progressivism (remember folks, progressivism is just Communism by another
name) are on Obama’s political agenda. Something is clearly wrong with America, and
you cannot deny it. Sarah Palin knows it because, as she has so eloquently put it, “Moms
kinda just know when something’s wrong.”

"I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from
wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them."
~ Thomas Jefferson

PS: There might be another of these threads, not sure.

[Il Medico]

So my friend, being a smart guy, responded to the Tea Party bullshit in the US in a tasty way: through biting humor. He wrote this piece for our school's paper, but like most liberal media pieces, it found it "too offensive" and that he had to put a disclaimer that it was actual satire (as if nobody would get that). Hopefully you'll like it; he's given me permission to put this up:



PS: There might be another of these threads, not sure.
tbh, I wouldn't be surprised if this was a serious statement by a right winger. I hear shit like this all the time down here. If that is obvious satire in NY, well, I gotta go there.

[fa2991]

If the name weren't "Rushbeck Moneybags," I would have thought it was real.

[ContrarianLemming]

I love it when far right wingers quote founding fathers, it just seems very funny, they clearly adore these poor.

good satire, bravo, I've seen statements just like this.

[Dimentio]

I would also have thought it to be real for America.

Your country is scaring me.

[Chambered Word]

"Moms just kinda know when something's wrong."

Yes. They do.

[IllicitPopsicle]

LOL, sounds just like something Jello Biafra would say in his warbly George Bush voice on spoken word tours.

[Commiechu]

I miss having a school paper..we were able to get lots of interesting ideas circulating that way.

[DecDoom]

Our school newspaper is a complete waste of ink and paper. It largely consists of top ten lists, reviews of movies that came out the year before, and news that is reported months late (for example, the Iranian election response was reported 4 months later). It's also typo-ridden, poorly laid out, and it uses badly photoshopped images for its articles (people still have outlines, for example).

[synthesis]

I wouldn't really call it satire. You need to take these ideas and take them far enough that they become comically absurd. I'm not saying that it tries to be humorous and fails, I'm saying that I don't see any attempts at humor at all, which is a shame, because these kinds of sentiments are ripe for such treatment.

[Bilan]

^^ what he said.

[silvermtn37]

I wouldn't really call it satire. You need to take these ideas and take them far enough that they become comically absurd. I'm not saying that it tries to be humorous and fails, I'm saying that I don't see any attempts at humor at all, which is a shame, because these kinds of sentiments are ripe for such treatment.
Ummmmmm: "the squeeze and scram", "I do not apologize of my way of life", "Poor people are poor because...they fraud social services" !!!!!!!!!! I think these statements qualify as satire! Satires are supposed to persuade and convince the reader that the writer's opinion is correct, but also show how completely retarded you must be to honestly believe and live by the writer's opinion. I wrote this satire :P

[synthesis]

No, that's not what satires are supposed to do. If everyone is saying, "I actually thought this was real," then...

http://images.encyclopediadramatica.com/images/f/fc/Fatkidwrong.jpg

Doing it right. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Modest_Proposal)

[silvermtn37]

If that's the truth, why is the daily show or the colbert report considered satirical shows? They do not exaggerate EVERYTHING out of proportion, they do what good satires should do: use humor, irony, and some exaggeration to criticize people's stupidity and vices. too much exaggeration makes the satire too convoluted and sometimes not funny

[Jazzhands]

People thought it was not really satire because the right is so fucking crazy in this country that you can never tell when they're kidding or not. like Hoxhaists.

[Pretty Flaco]

I don't mean to be cynical, but I thought it was a little lame and dry, not to mention generic.

[MarxSchmarx]

I think the newspaper's editorial board made the right decision to squash this piece.

Apart from its stylistic limitations already noted (grounds enough already) and the fact that it isn't really all that funny, phrases like "anchor babies" and "poor people are poor because they take drugs" ARE offensive. Just as "throw the Jews down the well". When you publish an editorial, even a community viewpoint, it reflects on the paper as a whole. A student from an immigrant family that was struggling to make ends meet would not find this very funny and would be justified in the paper thinking its funny how they are attacked.

[Martin Blank]

As someone who has experience with being an editor, I would have rejected this for two reasons:

1) It fails as satire. In fact, apart from the false name used, it is almost indistinguishable from the rantings of real rightwingers who post on forums like FreeRepublic. Many of the statements are taken almost verbatim from rightwing commentators like Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly, from rightwing politicians like Sarah Palin, Rand Paul and Sharron Angle, and from other assorted rightwing whackjobs like Orly Taitz. Indeed, some of their real comments are even worse than what's put in this commentary.

2. It lacks focus. Good articles, whether they are satire or not, need a focus -- an angle, to use the lingo. This article is like performing surgery with a chainsaw. It just rips and slashes randomly, and it's not very effective. Honestly, it reads like boilerplate, not original thought. Nobody would really read beyond the third paragraph, except in the hope that the article would end after the fourth.

(I won't count the spelling, grammar and punctuation problems with the article, since more veteran contributors are often prone to such mistakes themselves.)

Sorry if this seems harsh, but I've been doing this kind of work too long to be nice about it.

[Martin Blank]

I think the newspaper's editorial board made the right decision to squash this piece.

Apart from its stylistic limitations already noted (grounds enough already) and the fact that it isn't really all that funny, phrases like "anchor babies" and "poor people are poor because they take drugs" ARE offensive. Just as "throw the Jews down the well". When you publish an editorial, even a community viewpoint, it reflects on the paper as a whole. A student from an immigrant family that was struggling to make ends meet would not find this very funny and would be justified in the paper thinking its funny how they are attacked.

But these comments are already in the body politic, coming from established politicians, and has been repeated in numerous newspapers (and on television and radio, and on the Internet). Indeed, the "anchor babies" term is being used by elements of both sides in the "mainstream" discussion, in spite of its offensive character. To see it used these days is not uncommon, which itself is yet another concession to the reactionary rightwing "culture warriors".