When things gang aft agley
Seriously, I wasn't being serious
I am blessed with the innate ability to say things with a straight face that I don’t really mean. Some people call this being facetious; I call it being funny. Or silly. Others might call it sarcasm, but there is a difference. Sarcasm is meant to convey scorn or ridicule for a concept, a practice. A person. I admit that I am often sarcastic in my speech and in my writing. When I am, I sometimes make the mistake of thinking that the listener or reader will know it.
But they don’t always.
I’ve been writing sarcastically for a while, at least as far back as high school and certainly when I was taking college English courses in the mid-1970s, one of which was called Writing the Editorial. Most of what I wrote was serious stuff. For example, we were tasked with writing an opinion piece on whether Pittsburgh should host the 1984 World’s Fair. I made what I — and my professor — thought was a well-reasoned case against it. But in another editorial I attacked two proposed Pennsylvania bills that seemed to me ludicrous: One would have outlawed self-service gas stations; the other proposed that a thrice-divorced person would not be allowed to remarry in Pennsylvania.
Gas station owners lobbied against the first bill, saying that self-service stations would cost jobs (true to some extent) and also that gas-pumpers had to be “properly trained” to avoid catastrophe. I revealed that when I was in high school, my band did a fundraising drive that included allowing some of us to pump gas at a band parent’s station. My “proper training” took 30 seconds. I then facetiously pointed out that I had oftentimes been served by a “properly trained” gas jockey that threw a lit cigarette away just before pulling the hose from the pump. I also argued that “baseball logic” shouldn’t be applied to marriage and divorce. Then, sarcastically, I suggested that the obvious solution was to combine both bills: anyone who had been divorced three times should be sentenced to life pumping gas.
Because it was a writing assignment, this editorial was never published. Had it been, I’m sure that some readers would have thought I was serious. I should have remembered that.
Recently, while searching online for a column I had written some time ago — I had lost my backup copy in a computer hard drive crash three years back — I stumbled upon a response, published on Facebook, to a different column I had written in 2018 but had, frankly, forgotten. You’ll find it here: “The times they are a’ changeling.” You may want to read it before continuing here — just to see what happened with this reader.
I wrote that column in response to Donald Trump’s exaggerated, o-so-scary-’round-the-campfire tale of “migrant caravans,” supposedly composed of criminals, on their way from Latin America to undermine life in the United States. Here are his words from a speech in November of that year:
“At this very moment, large well-organized caravans of migrants are marching towards our southern border. Some people call it an invasion. …These are tough people in many cases; a lot of young men, strong men and a lot of men that maybe we don’t want in our country. …This isn’t an innocent group of people.”
This was about the same time that Trump had said, of Mexico:
"When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best. They're not sending you. They're not sending you. [Repetition is Trump’s] They're sending people that have lots of problems, and they're bringing those problems with us [sic]. They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists."
Statements like this are pure demagoguery. They play to the political base by demonizing anyone who does not look like you, think like you or speak your language, by stoking fear of the unknown to drive voters to the polls. This tactic worked in 1939 Germany. And, sadly, it works in contemporary America.
I write columns that are mostly humorous. That’s because I believe that we have to find the humor in everyday life to be able to survive. I don’t expect everyone to “get” my humor. That’s okay. But sometimes, things that occur in life are so blatantly wrong that I have to comment on them seriously. But …
I grew up with a decidedly twisted sense of humor fostered by reading “Mad” magazine and watching Sid Caesar, Mel Brooks, Peter Sellers and, later Monty Python. Much of their humor was nonsensical. But much of it was aimed squarely at targets that needed to be deflated. When I started writing newspaper columns back in the 1990s I hit upon the device of parodying what I consider to be ridiculous or offensive statements or actions by writing what appears to be something similar. Much of what I write in these is patently absurd. I do this hoping that most people will see the virtual tongue firmly planted in my virtual cheek.
But, as poet Robert Burns knew, sometimes things “gang aft agley” — they oft go astray. When that happens, people simply don’t glean my meaning.
In the “Changeling” column I’m posing as a supporter of the “criminal migrant caravan” theory. But I took the theory further — several steps further, into the Twilight Zone, even. My migrant caravan was composed of “changelings.”
The literature of many cultures is rife with changelings — substitutes left by supernatural or mythical creatures in place of human children they had kidnapped. Shakespeare and the Brothers Grimm penned tales featuring changelings, and a novel called “The Changeling” is said to have terrorized families in the Victorian Age. Most tales involve fairies taking human children to improve fairy bloodlines. The changeling often is said to have mystical powers but is an imperfect, though nearly identical, copy of the kidnapped child. Changeling tales are found mostly in European literature, but who’s to say that, somewhere “up the holler’ in Kentucky, little Mitch McConnell wasn’t snatched by fairies and replaced?
So I wrote my column in what I thought was the most blatantly absurd way possible. Here’s an excerpt:
Beware the changeling convoy advancing on America! …
The Fairyland economy is in the dumper because of cheap Elf labor, so they want to see their children being taken care of by American humans who, let me tell you, are the best parents in America. And once the convoy of their spawn reaches our shores, changelings will be handed U.S. citizenship, welfare … and maybe even tickets to see “Hamilton.” …
While you have been reading this opinion piece, the changeling convoy has advanced like a screaming Mongol hoard – only a lot slower and quieter and without horses. Certain political parties are openly encouraging millions of changelings to break our laws and overwhelm our nation!
Seems obviously outlandish, right?
Not to this reader, who was offended by this sentence near the beginning of the column:
Organized and financed by oligarchs, [the caravan] is composed mostly of the “lovers, muggers and thieves” first mentioned by the Standells in their 1966 hit, “Dirty Water.”
You see, this reader was the lead singer of the Standells.
His Facebook post taking issue with my column was lucid and well-reasoned — at least from his viewpoint. Here are a few bits of his response:
“I take exception to your use [of] our song "Dirty Water" to embellish your racist rant. For someone heartless enough to rage against poor and impoverished people who are escaping every imaginable horror, whose only hope is to be free, you clearly display your lack of humanity. …
”You seem to parrot the words of our current president … America is made up of immigrants, and, yes, some of the original settlers were "lovers, muggers, and thieves." However, those who do manage to come to this country produce far fewer criminals than the general American population…”
He ends with this final blow: “You say you're a musician? You must enjoy the company of Ted Nugent and Kid Rock, who are both on your side of the fence.”
Color me puzzled.
I have been called many things, but never “rightwing” or “racist,” and I certainly have never been consigned to the same dumpster as Nugent and Rock. This reader had, obviously, thought I was being serious. He had missed the virtual tongue firmly planted in my virtual cheek.
This reader lives in Boston, and I was somewhat surprised that, even in the digital age, his eyes would have found a column written for a small newspaper in Pennsylvania. And I understand that, not being familiar with my style or previous columns, he could have thought I was actually, as he put it, a “rightwing columnist.” I felt compelled to write back, even after almost seven years. I didn’t chastise him, but I did point out that I thought my inclusion of marauding fairies and other obviously ridiculous assertions — that fairies had caused the Civil War, for one — would have made it plain that my column was satiric. I told him I was sorry that he had been offended, but that I wasn’t sorry I had written the column.
I’ve been writing long enough to know that humor isn’t a universal language. Senses of humor vary. There’s a reason that sarcastic statements in emails are often accompanied by the device of writing *sarcasm* before and after comments to make sure it’s obvious. Without the benefit or voice inflection or facial expressions, things can be misconstrued. That’s the risk writers take, I suppose.
But, ya know, the fact that he took this column seriously tells me that I had successfully appropriated the style that Trump so often uses. And it should tell you all you need to know about the power of demagoguery, of appealing to the “worse angels of our nature.” It explains a lot about the current state of America.
I don’t expect everyone — or anyone, really — to agree with my opinions. When they do, it’s gratifying. But I also must admit that, often, when I say or write something that people misunderstand, I am delighted. And I have sometimes written a column that was taken by those on both sides of an issue to be in support of their side. When someone from each side thanks me, I know I have succeeded in my real goal — sowing confusion in the already weed-choked gardens of readers’ minds
*sarcasm* Imagine my virtual fist pumping. *sarcasm*
Are you serious?? The fairy lobby will be after you.