I Hadn't Thought of That

You guys will appreciate this. Yesterday I sent the following e-mail to my Creative Nonfiction professor:



"I hope you're having a good weekend. I sure am. I was reading the New York Times today, which is my new favored method for procrastinating on homework for your class. I stumbled across this article a moment ago and it hit me. I wish I could write like this guy. Please make this possible immediately. Keep in mind, my comments on your teacher evaluation this semester may hang in the balance."


This morning I got the following reply:


"That would seem to me to be in reach, perhaps not immediately. Two things Hauck does. He assumes a uniformity not just of age but also temperament in his readers, and he tends to feed his sarcasm by developing an original idea (the presposterous sitcom family) by building it out of cliched parts. (Doesn't Dave Barry do something like this too?) The palace made of poop is always hilarious. It makes the irony clear.

"The gift of satire is that rhetorically it has no equal, for nothing immobilizes idiots--not fear of death, not kidnapping of one's whelps--near as much as fear of humiliation or ridicule. People will side with Hitler, Stalin, or Dick Cheney (seriously, listen to him if you can stand it, it's all in the sneer) rather than be the public butt. The down side of satire is that its effect depends on broadly shared moral values, and we hardly have real morality any more, much less shared constants. And that's why the Reich and the Soviet Union were not apt places for satire, executions notwithstanding. In our house, it works for TV, tends to miss on important issues such as lying on the part of Presidents or optional warfare. Revealed: the profound cultural disability of relativism. Bright side: who catches our irony makes moving from one social enclave to another an easier process than it would be otherwise.

"As for the final humiliations of the semester, methinks how I evaluate you will tend to overshadow how you evaluate me. So get busy and start absorbing. Muhaahaa.

"Best,
Mark"



Damn. I hadn't thought of that. My point is, my nonfiction professor kicks ass. His lectures are just like this. You should hear what he says about the rest of the Republicans.