Is the best satirical news found at The New Republic?
This is so brilliant it’s hard to believe it isn’t an Onion article:
In an article surrounded by ads — many of which are made to look like links to their own content — The New Republic comes down hard on the various satirical news sites run by The Daily Currant, partially because those sites have a lot of ads. Also, apparently The Daily Currant is dangerous because it makes reporters from places like The New Republic look bad when they run with crazy sounding s**t they read on the Internet without bothering to fact-check it first.
If you liked that article, be sure to catch The New Republic’s upcoming hard-hitting expose, Having to Do Research By Reading Things With More Than 140 Characters Is Hard.
Deadpan humor is Communism.Report
Leaving TNR aside for the moment, I find it hard to disagree with the basic premise that the Daily Currant has never published anything humorous, and that we therefore would be well served to be skeptical about whether humor/satire is what it’s going for.Report
I disagree that satire needs to somehow have funny gags in order to be satire. Or to make a Stephen-Colbert-based analogy:
The Onion is satire similar to The Colbert Report; The Daily Currant is satire similar to Colbert’s 2006 White House Correspondence Dinner speech.
They are both (I believe) quite brilliant bits of satire, even though the former regularly gets belly laughs but no one really laughed at the latter.Report
I thought the piece about gluten in Portland’s water supply to be quite funny, in its own way.Report
I don’t think you have to have gags to be satirical, but I do think you need to make some sort of interesting point to be satire, and I don’t think the Currant really does that. It feels too much like clickbait generation rather than an actual critique of anything.Report
The daily currant is fairly standard satire. And its funny. For example, the gluten article clearly is about poking fun at people who are obsessed with gluten allergy, a condition that is over-diagnosed in the US.Report
Let’s just look at a rundown of the headlines presented in the daily currant and then ask ourselves how anybody could not take them as something other than satire.
Unemployed Gender Studies Major Sues ‘The Patriarchy’
Donald Sterling Hiding Cash in Minority Neighboorhoods
Gluten Found in Portland’s Water Supply
Nation Dying of Obesity Calls for Stricter Gun Control
9/11 Museum to Host Exclusive Dance Party
Obama Pledges $700 Billion Bailout of VA
Mitch McConnell Brings Rifle to ‘Larry the Cable Guy’ Show
China Hires NYPD to Advise on Repressing Protests
Dartmouth Expels White Student For Wearing Sombrero
Christian Boy Dies For 3 Minutes, Meets Allah in Heaven
Santorum Listed as ‘Bisexual’ on OKCupid Profile
Study Links Homosexuality to Eating Grits
There is nothing subtle about the stuff they write.Report
Further, how can you read those and think the Currant isn’t funny?
Any one of those could have been an Onion headline.Report
Murali,
Thanks. That was very useful. From TNR piece, I would have thought *all * their pieces were intended as trickery. It seems that was misleading.Report
Someone in TNR is complaining about fake news? Come on. Their 2002-2003 archives are still online, have they so short a memory? “Iraq who?”Report
I can’t help but wonder if The Daily Currant’s humor is manifested within its readers.Report
Actually, I took this as an slam against the current method of “journalism”. What’s fact checked anymore? Get a press release from somewhere….rewrite it. No research, no fact checking, no challenges to the POV, no hard questions.
And you need a journalism degree from Columbia to do that shit?Report