Call me crazy. Call me immature. Or call me deluded. Maybe I should be called all of the above because at my age I’m not supposed to feel this blush of excitement. But here’s the embarrassing truth. I’ve got a crush on satirist Andy Borowitz.
What’s Andy got that heats up my blood? What he’s got is perfect pitch for capturing the absurd in the contemporary American psyche. Being a progressive news junkie, how can a girl resist?
Lord Byron, a consummate seducer like Andy, wrote, “Fools are my theme, let satire be my song.” If ever I find myself lucky enough to spend a few moments shooting the breeze with Andy over a slow latte, I plan to take a stab at a bit of verbal seduction. After dropping a few well-placed pearls of wisdom, I’d find just the right moment to slip Byron’s words into the conversation. I imagine Andy would smile and nod his head, surprised at my erudition and this unexpected dollop of sophistication. I’m certain that before our cups were drained and our little tryst had come to an end that Andy would find a way to let me know how much he appreciated me reminding him of Byron’s scathing, yet poetic, observation. I imagine that my seduction would have been so complete by that time that Andy would feel comfortable letting me enter into the inner sanctum of his creative process. My guess is that Andy would confide that sentiments much like Byron’s are what turn on his own creative juices when composing his satirical masterworks.
Of course, this Andy crush is a bit of fantasy. But the truth is that Borowitz sings the song of satire like no other comic or social critic out there today. Before leaving my life forever, I imagine Andy pushing back his café chair and whispering seductively that life is short, so why not embrace the satire while you can?
I say, take Andy’s advice and read his latest pitch-perfect ditty on the ebola panic and America’s fatal attraction to the fairy tales of the anti-science lotharios.
There is a deep-seated fear among some Americans that an Ebola outbreak could make the country turn to science.
In interviews conducted across the nation, leading anti-science activists expressed their concern that the American people, wracked with anxiety over the possible spread of the virus, might desperately look to science to save the day.
“It’s a very human reaction,” said Harland Dorrinson, a prominent anti-science activist from Springfield, Missouri. “If you put them under enough stress, perfectly rational people will panic and start believing in science.”
Additionally, he worries about a “slippery slope” situation, “in which a belief in science leads to a belief in math, which in turn fosters a dangerous dependence on facts.”
At the end of the day, though, Dorrinson hopes that such a doomsday scenario will not come to pass. “Time and time again through history, Americans have been exposed to science and refused to accept it,” he said. “I pray that this time will be no different.”