Satire is dead (George Takei retweet)

[soothsayer]

Link to tweet

?s=21

The Ayn Rand Institute received a PPP loan of between $350K and $1 million
https://bit.ly/3eW7AHH

[brush]

1. Hahahhahahahaha! Just like her, taking welfare or SS or whatever free money it was.

[Brother Buzz]

12. Word!

[muriel_volestrangler]

2. In what way were the Ayn Rand Institute's activities affected?

Don't they just write about stuff? They can work from home. Isn't that good enough fro their donors?

[Blue Owl]

3. Big Fat Atlas is hoarding his precious welfare check

n/t

[markwbradley]

4. Long Live Satire!

For the first three years of President Trump’s “Reign of Terror”, I chose to believe Mr. Takei’s proclamation noting the demise of the nearly 3,000-year-old genre known as “satire.” As a satirist myself, whose work has been, on occasion, featured on this very website (Notably, “The Do-it-yourself Online Presidential Leadership Quiz” [Democratic Underground, 7 March 2006], a piece I penned during the Bush Jr. maladministration.), I found this particularly hard to countenance.

But during these dispiriting times, I have had a change of heart. It is indeed true that political satire has become a daunting challenge, given Trump’s propensity for monumental bafoonery without a hint of irony. But I assure you, it CAN be done. The proof of this is in the thousands of readers who have chosen to grace my satirical pieces with their generous attention in the past few weeks.

Many folks in this country are what i call “irony-challenged,” but there is still an audience of more sophisticated tastes that enjoys vicariously partaking in stripping “Our Dear Leader” of his Pompous Circumstances. In the immortal words of Ralph Waldo Emerson, “No dignity, no learning, no force of character can make any stand against good wit.” How much more vulnerable, then, is a man/child devoid of dignity, learning, or character?

[soothsayer]

5. Huzzah!

[sarge43]

6. But hypocrisy is alive and thriving. n/t

[Wounded Bear]

8. Hypocrisy is to satire as drama is to comedy...

[Volaris]

7. Yeah, but here's the thing:

'Bootstraps' is not the ultimate goal of Randism...getting someone else to pay for it, IS. For them, who better than the government?.

The wall street bailout (as far as wall st was concerned) was the OPPOSITE of hypocrisy...it wasnt a repudiation of their beliefs or a demonstration of their failure, AT ALL...

It was Proof of Concept.


Which is why it can NEVER be allowed to happen again.

[TheBlackAdder]

9. And NO Republicans came to her aid when Ayn Rand was poor & ill. She went on Medicare & SSI.

[erpowers]

10. Not Surprising

This is not surprising. Ayn Rand took government money when she needed the money.

[SCantiGOP]

11. She was a sellout

I knew several people back in the 70s who were Rand true believers.
I remember her ecstasy at being invited to the VIP section to watch one of the moon launches. She wrote an editorial for some magazine about how this was the epitome of man's heroic nature, using his intellect and reason to be able to travel into space, etc etc.

I remember pointing out to two of her supporters that the heroes of her novels would have blown the rocket up on the launch pad if they could, since it represented a huge government project financed by taxes, which they equated to government-coerced extortion.