American civilization began to decline...

...with the publication of NatLamp's high school yearbook parody, says this article in Slate. Actually quite informative--though it backs off at the end. Here's the last paragraph:



"What's being satirized above all is the relentless tedium and mediocrity of suburban life, at least as seen through the eyes of a clever and irritable adolescent, along with the totalitarian cheerfulness that its boosters employ to make it tolerable. The yearbook parody is a pitiless critique of life in these United States—every bit as forlorn as Winesburg, Ohio or Spoon River Anthology. But it is even more insidious because you can't stop laughing. Since its publication 30 years ago, the ironic detachment with which affluent baby boomers have saturated the culture has become old news, of course, and a bit tedious itself. Yet it has seldom enjoyed so exquisite an expression as in the Lampoon yearbook. And the country has never recovered from it."



Well, shoot--up until that last sentence, I couldn't have said it better than myself. But the problem isn't that the country has never "recovered from it." It's that the country has never adequately addressed the wrongs that caused the satire! That's why Reagan was--and remains--such a foolish, poisonous travesty. Since then, so much of American politics has been about returning to a mythical past; as the writer puts it, " what America looked like when the Beatles stepped off the plane."



It's a giveaway that this guy is a writer for the Weekly Standard (and a pal of PJ O'Rourke's); if satire exposes something nasty or inadequate, the proper response isn't to "recover from it"--ie, pretend like it wasn't exposed. The proper response is to try to fix it. That's why PJO isn't, in the final analysis, a first-class satirist; he's altogether too comfortable with the folly he exposes. There's no outrage, and as uncomfortable as that emotion is (especially over the long-haul--ask Twain or Thurber), it's necessary equipment. "Affluent Baby Boomers" despise discomfort, and so we get "ironic detachment"--that is, detachment in the face of something that demands positive attention, and improvement.



Also, Ed forwarded this excellent story of election tampering.