Bryan Bran Case

Bryan Bran

"We as a society were becoming slightly less stupid", said Dave Barry in his article The Miami Herald. Throughout this article Barry goes month after month, incident after incident talking about how slow on the uptake society has gotten. He uses satire a several times in this article.

For example when Barry states, "Let's pour ourselves a stiff drink and take a look back at the train wreck we're staggering away from" he means let us look back at the bad if not horrible year we are finally ending. He starts by talking about the brilliant singer/ song-writer Adele, who has an excellent voice. Barry compares her to the Korean artist who sings a bunch of gibberish "riding a Korean imaginary horse." This is one of the many examples he uses to say, why are we being impressed with unreal talents?

Barry also declares how even the State of Union denies the critics that claim that Obama's presidency has been a letdown, even though the "White house aide carries the scalp the Osama bin Laden" like it is a toy. Barry is in polite words is saying, how is it that our President is failing, when under his term he brought down the leader of the most feared terrorist group known as Al Qaida . Is that not itself a great achievement for a President?

"The scandals continue", Barry says. In the month of April, Facebook was the domestic business of the month. Facebook bought the soon to be popular social network called Instagram. Facebook spent a large bill of one billion dollars. Which to be honest even teenagers do not understand the point of Facebook, much less Instagram. How can something like social networks be more important than worrying about professional athletes calling each other inappropriate names.

Also, in the same month, a big deal was made regarding the NFL. The NFL commissioner Goodell and the media bring up to light the foul language from one team to another. Now and days, society has to worry about problems like not using the politically correct term. How is this more important than the "beloved entertainer" Dick Clark passing away? Not much talk was brought to someone who was actually important because all the attention was towards one football team hurting another football team's feelings. Using satire he compared the NFL dilemma and the Facebook bargain to the death of someone who actually was important, Barry puts the reader in the situation to critically think on what really important.

Satire is another way to ruthlessly criticize the way our politics, economy or society is running. I believe that without satire our critics would all be sugar coated and no changes would be made.