Satire

Amy Poehler and Maya Rudolph’s funeral for satire

From our US edition

‘A man is angry at a libel because it is false, but at a satire because it is true,’ wrote G.K. Chesterton. Democrats seem to understand that point, though sometimes they are a little overeager to show they can laugh at themselves. Take the virtual Democratic fundraiser on Monday night. Vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris was joined by 2016 Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, along with — get this — Maya Rudolph and Amy Poehler, who play them on Saturday Night Live! Readers were presumably as stunned as Cockburn to learn that wealthy thespians enjoy sharing a stage with Democratic leaders.

satire

Antifa for Biden

From our US edition

Hey folks, it’s me, your friendly neighborhood antifa ringleader. You may recognize me from such news clips as ‘Small group of troublemakers seen smashing windows’ and ‘ANTIFA dude on fire in Portland’. That’s me in the black hoodie.I’m enjoying a bit of downtime ahead of another largely peaceful weekend (weather permitting!). Right now I’m changing flights — who knew there were flight changes in business class? — but I figured I’d take a break from my busy schedule of scheming to give you all an important message: vote for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris on November 3.I know what you’re thinking: isn’t antifa a series of anarchist groups with little to do with center-left mainstream politics?

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Hasn’t Jessica Krug suffered enough?

From our US edition

A university professor in Washington DC whose work focuses on Africa and the African diaspora apologized last week for ‘pretending’ to be black. In an emotionally raw, difficult-to-read blog post, Jessica Krug revealed she’s actually white and has been deceiving her friends and colleagues for years.  As I read the tortured words in her post, I became enraged. Her words brought back a torrent of memories from when I myself felt the need to keep my transracial status a closely guarded secret. Thankfully these days I feel comfortable enough to tell the world: my name is Godfrey Elfwick. I am wrongskin.

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Sources: Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg weeps in his office ‘all the time’

From our US edition

This week, the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg dropped what could be his biggest piece since he won a major award for drawing bogus links between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda. The piece claims that during a 2018 visit to France President Trump canceled a visit to an American war cemetery, dismissing the dead who lie there as 'suckers' and 'losers' unworthy of passing beneath his presidential shadow. Outsiders have expressed skepticism of the story for many reasons. For starters, in Goldberg’s account, Trump also questioned America’s pointless and enormously costly involvement in World War One. If Trump really said that, it would be an unprecedented display of historical knowledge and insight on the President’s part.

A view from 2027

From our US edition

March 17, 2027Whenever the Pink Shirts come by for a check, Inez hits the discreet button beneath the kitchen counter that releases the trap door into the cellar where she now keeps her most expensive shoes and we’ve got about 30 seconds to get inside.Inez tells us much about the outside world that we’ve missed for so long. That the Pink Shirts are now knocking on doors daily to ask if any Deplorables live there. If so, they are immediately taken away to one of the Cal State campuses for reeducation but Inez says no one has ever returned. We fear only death awaits us at Cal State.They often have lists. Inez says the Beverly Hills Autonomous Zone District Commander is the foulest person she’s ever seen.

2027

Why I’m voting for Kamala Harris (and Joe Biden)

From our US edition

The presidential election hurtles towards us like a portentous comet; hailing joyous salvation, or foreshadowing unfathomable doom. Of course the latter of those refers to the possibility of decent Americans being forced to endure four more years of Donald Trump in the White House. Life under Trump’s hateful regime has been intolerable. Could you even call it ‘life’? More like simply surviving. Eking out a paltry existence each day like a season finale of The Walking Dead. Desperately holding onto the tentative hope that one day Trump will be overthrown, his army of MAGA zombies finally silenced, and his fascistic dictatorship brought to an end — via the means of a democratic election (seeing as every possible method of impeachment has failed).

A newsletter from the Society for the Elimination of Risk

From our US edition

Fall NewsletterOur Director, Eustace Stockstill, introduces the Fall issue.Dear fellow Soterians,I have tremendous news to share with you. Our membership drive during the last six months has been successful beyond our most imprudent hopes! Even now we can hardly believe it. The number of our members has increased by a power of seven! That’s a power, not a multiplier: we have doubled our membership seven times since March!I’m sure old members will remember the hurtful article a year ago in the Daily Gaslighter that dismissed us as cranks, mocking us as nothing but a tiny group of English eccentrics. Now we are having the laugh on them! Now we have 10 times more members than they have subscribers, and our influence is growing daily.

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How we settle political disagreements in our family

From our US edition

When it comes to recent controversies surrounding the very public life of the Conway family, we can only wish them the best. Kellyanne was a White House counselor, George was part of the anti-Trump ‘Lincoln Project’, and their teenage daughter is a young progressive who denounced both of her parents on social media. Kellyanne and George are stepping back from public life to focus on their family. We hope they can rebuild bridges and put all of this behind them.Having different political opinions within a family can be tough. We think, for example, of the Hitchens brothers. Christopher was an impassioned atheist and liberal internationalist. Peter is an equally impassioned Christian and social conservative.

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vegan smoothie

My hot vegan smoothie

From our US edition

Last week I was suspended from Twitter and subsequently plummeted headlong into a deep depression. What would I do with my life now? At first there was a little solace in the fact that Titania had also had her account deactivated, but then she got hers back and has been crowing over it ever since. Just goes to show, trans women are the most targeted and vulnerable people in society today. On Saturday morning, having spent the past few days feeling oppressed and marginalized, I decided I needed a pick-me-up and headed out to treat myself to a detoxifying smoothie from Floozy Suzie’s Juice Bar. Floozy is a friend of mine from uni who works as a drag queen by night and pulped superfood vendor by day.

I was almost the Portland Athena

From our US edition

Portland I am the Portland Athena. What I mean is, I would have been the Portland Athena if everything had gone to plan. I had the idea to give the police a display of naked vulnerability days before that yoga-teaching sex-worker claimed the title. What’s more, instead of passively sitting on my fanny with my mangina out, I would have put on a real show. I wouldn’t just have shown my labia and planted my scrotum on the cold roadway: I would have delivered a frolicking ballet of powerful naked wokeness to dazzle the world and bring a tear to the eye of the most hardened fascist. Alas, ’twas not to be. Let me start at the beginning...

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My open letter to Twitter

From our US edition

Dear Twitter,The other day I spotted an elderly man not wearing a mask in the pharmacy. He had a badge pinned to his shirt which proclaimed him to have COPD, absolving him of his responsibility to do the decent thing. At first glance everything looked legit, but to my keen eyes, the kerning on his medical exemption badge was all wrong. A friend of mine is doing a graphic design course and after discreetly WhatsApping them a close-up, they confirmed to me it was indeed a clever forgery. I immediately opened my Twitter app so that I could broadcast me shaming him to my 128,000 followers, but my plan was abruptly scuppered. I tapped the familiar icon and was confronted with a message telling me that my account, MY account had been suspended! SUSPENDED! Can you imagine that?

twitter

The Matrix isn’t the only classic film secretly about the trans experience

From our US edition

After years of speculation, Lilly Wachowski has finally given us confirmation that The Matrix trilogy is an allegory of the transgender experience. Although it is obvious to anyone who filters popular media through the lens of woke issues that Neo’s struggle to understand and accept his identity represented the conflict every transgender person faces, to have it verified by one of the writers is a significant step forward in the fight for equality. Some might question the reason as to why it’s taken so long for Lilly, who is herself transgender, to speak up about this and why she chose to highlight it now: ‘(In 1999) …the world just wasn’t ready for it’ she explains in a video.

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Are we living in the golden age of political satire?

From our US edition

Stamford, Connecticut My first novel was published 34 years ago under the title The White House Mess, a wordplay on its Navy-run dining rooms. I’d spent two years as vice president George H.W. Bush’s speechwriter and had read a number of White House memoirs, all of which had two themes: 1) it wasn’t my fault, and 2) it would have been much worse if I hadn’t been there. The novel was a satirical — in today’s terminology, a ‘fake’ — White House memoir by a clueless but loyal chief of staff of a future administration that would be sworn in on January 20, 1989.

satire

Rich people are struggling during COVID, too

From our US edition

The New York Times reports on the struggles faced by families who, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, have been forced to convert their second homes into their primary homes. The Gray Lady observes: ‘These homeowners share many of the same difficulties as anyone dealing with the coronavirus lockdown — working in communal spaces where their children are now present 24/7, discovering items in their home that need updating, and then renovating a home while they are living in it. In addition, these homeowners must adjust to living in relatively unfamiliar towns, often far from friends, family, or creature comforts like a favorite bagel shop or longtime barber.’ Don't I know it. I consider myself a solidly middle-class American, making about $500,000 a year.

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white people, stop capitalizing on your skin color

From our US edition

The Associated Press recently posted an announcement on their website detailing their decision to capitalize the ‘B’ in Black when used in the context of race and culture.'These changes align with long-standing capitalization of other racial and ethnic identifiers such as Latino, Asian American and Native American,' writes AP’s Vice President for Standards, John Daniszewski in a blog post on the AP website.The following day a further announcement was made explaining why they had taken the decision to continue to use a lowercase ‘w’ in ‘white’ when used in the same context.

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Godfrey’s Race to Dinner

From our US edition

Portland, Oregon If you want to know whether you’re a racist, look in the mirror. If you are white, you’re a racist. It really is that simple. No matter how progressive you think you are, having black and brown friends cannot repair the innate racism of your birth. Your vanilla voice is not welcome. Your low-pigment opinions are invalid. The back of the bus is where you need to go when it comes to having a say about race. And don’t give me your white fragility. Thankfully two Women of Color have taken it upon themselves to educate white women on their privilege. The ‘Race to Dinner’ service offers liberal white women and other daughters of the Confederacy the chance to have dinner with proudly black Women of Color.

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Expelliarmus, J.K. Rowling!

From our US edition

Professor Sprout has called out J.K. Rowling’s violently problematic comments regarding trans people in a recent article in the Times of London. ‘If you seriously want to become a woman you should be allowed to. You can’t be fascist about it,’ said the Hogwarts Herbology teacher, as she expertly re-potted a Bubotuber without wasting so much as one drop of its valuable pus. I could not agree more with the professor’s words. Since I transitioned, ‘Biology’ has become as problematic a subject as the Dark Arts. I am beginning to suspect Rowling had intended for us to see Voldemort as the hero in her books all along, seeing as she has far more in common with him than any Gryffindor.

Godfrey’s drag queen story time

From our US edition

This article was originally published in The Spectator’s Picture the scene. It is the middle of the afternoon. The window blinds are closed, the lights dimmed. The eager audience sits cross-legged on a patchwork rug, a frisson of excitement filling the air. Just as enthusiasm gives way to impatience, a captivating vision of womanhood bursts into the room in a glorious blaze of sound and sequins, riding a glittering chariot (a new Pride Ranger 2.0 All-Terrain 8mph Mobility Scooter) to the strains of Miley Cyrus’s ‘Wrecking Ball’. Her hair is a breathtakingly intricate architectural marvel, two-feet high and bedecked with curls. The heels of her knee-high patent-leather boots are an unapologetic six inches long.

story Godfrey Elwick attends his first Drag Queen Story Hour

Conservatives: stop appropriating cancel culture!

From our US edition

For some time now conservatives have been using the tactic of rummaging around in a person’s past, searching for evidence of problematic behavior. They call it ‘cancel culture’. What makes this entire situation worse is that conservatives are not even doing anything original. They are attempting to appropriate a custom which has been practiced by people on the left for years, claiming it as their own. Normally I would see mob-shaming as a perfectly legitimate method of purging society of wrongdoers. The digging up and cataloguing of people’s past micro-aggressions so that we may discredit and ostracize them from the Tribe is something The Woke have been doing for at least a decade now.

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Thank you, Ron Johnson!

From our US edition

You are in your office. Your boss appears. 'Can I have five minutes?' You can hardly refuse. His face is cold and grim, like he has just been diagnosed with COVID-19. He wants to talk to you about your comments. What comments? The comments you made about Jane in accounting. You misgendered her. You called her 'he'. Look, you say, you're sorry. Jane was James when you met her. It wasn’t malicious, it was just force of habit. Maybe so, but 'intent isn't magic'. Well, you'll apologize when you next see her. Maybe so, but we can't let something like this happen again. You're going to have to take some sensitivity training — unpaid, of course, and on your own time. You want to quit. You can't.

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