Satire is tricky and very misunderstood, if understood at all. Thusly, “I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled…”

When Jonathan Swift wrote this as part of his “A Modest Proposal, 1729″ many people took him seriously. Even then, the true meaning or intent of satire was misunderstood or went very far over the heads of the general population. It still does. Leonard Pitts Jr. has it exactly right!

So, as absurd, as over the top, as utterly outlandish as the New Yorker image strikes the more sophisticated among us, there is a large fringe out there for whom it will represent nothing more or less than the sum of their fears.

Instead of the meek inheriting the Earth, however, it is the ignorant who have overtaken America. They have always been there. Its just that the Internet has given them their voice of equality. Thus, when I recently wrote, Pandering to the Least Common Denominator it fell on relatively deaf ears.

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