To the Editor:
I greatly enjoyed Julia Bernstein's opinion piece ("Missing the Punchline," Aug. 2), which touched on the current state of American satire. I agree with many of her points, none of which I'll repeat. Instead, I'll repeat the one which motivated me to write -- namely, the issue of the public's inability to recognize subtle satire when they see it. It seems worse than ever today, but it's not a modern problem. Mark Twain wrote about the misperception of his satire as innocent fact in 1882's "The Petrified Man." Many people misunderstood the intent behind Swift's "A Modest Proposal" in his day. Even the Roman satirist Juvenal endured his share of swift kicks to the groin from people who just didn't "get it." It's likely Juvenal's own fault, though, for insisting on the hexameter form when the public taste had clearly moved on to pentameter by that time.
Regardless of the level of vulgarity, I'd suggest that the true mark of a satirist is whether he or she operates from a clear moral code -- whatever that code may be.
