A Modest Proposal (16 July 2008)

• On Force 29 Minutes, Squad Car Wrecked [The car evidently needed more training. ]
  
• Dead Doctors Used in Scams [Perhaps the live ones wouldn’t cooperate.]

But … on to today’s subject:

Jonathan Swift raised eyebrows and tempers in 1729—when many in Ireland were starving—with an essay entitled “A Modest Proposal: For Preventing the Children of Poor People in Ireland from Being a Burden to Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Publick.” Swift’s “Modest Proposal” was that the Irish could ease their economic difficulties by selling children born into poverty as food for rich ladies and gentlemen. To support his argument, Swift includes a list of preparation styles and calculations showing the financial benefits of his suggestion. Those in England (and Ireland) who were sufficiently well read to be familiar with the ironic essays of Horace and Juvenal, would have recognized that Swift was following the Latin form for irony. Unfortunately, many of Swift’s contemporaries missed the point, which is one of the hazards of satire and irony. Many took the essay at “face value” and were outraged. My high school English class was challenged with writing an in-class essay to explain the irony in the essay. Two of us in the class did well on the essay because we recognized that the irony began with the title: the proposal was not exactly “modest.” Most of those in the class had failed to grasp the ironies for what they were.

Not long ago, the New Yorker magazine found itself embroiled in a more modern version of ironic confusion. The Barry Blitt illustration of Barack and Michelle Obama dressed respectively as a Muslim and a militant (complete with automatic weapon) on the cover was meant as satire. Regular readers of the New Yorker are sufficiently sophisticated and urbane that they will get the joke. They will recognized that the cover was making fun of many of the lies that have been told about the Obamas since the 2008 presidential campaign began. Regular readers of the New Yorker know the "Truth" about such matters.

Unfortunately, for the New Yorker, that isn’t true of many of us who are not regular readers. Not only are we not Big City sophisticates, but also too few of us have read Swift and Pope, let alone Horace and Juvenal to fully appreciate irony. Unfortunately for the Obamas, the image on the cover represents the real and deep-seated fears of many, who would see the Blitt illustration and conclude that next on the agenda for the Obamas will be the selling of poor white children in the U.S. as food for oil-rich Muslims.

So … what, exactly, is the problem? It seems to me that the reaction to the Barry Blitt illustration indicates at least three problems. The first, and probably the most serious in that it is foundational, is the generally low level of literacy in the U.S. In part, this is a result of the shift away from what used to be called the “liberal arts” in education. Also in part, it is the natural result of the increasing need to know other things, such as understanding and using computer applications. The time and effort spent learning to appreciate irony may be considered a distraction from learning the skills required to function in modern society.

The second problem is the division implied by the New Yorker’s attitude and audience base. Founder Harold Ross declared in the 1925 prospectus for The New Yorker “that it is not edited for the old lady in Dubuque.” Even in 1925, the gap between urban sophisticates and the rest of us was seen as pretty wide. Modern technology, radio, TV, the Internet, modern cell phones and text messaging have reduced the gap in some ways but amplified it in others. I find some of the comments posted to Web sites virtually unreadable because they are written in text-message language rather than English. When I think about learning a foreign language, it’s usually something like Spanish, French, German, or Japanese….

The third problem is inherent in the social problems irony—at least of the literate variety—is intended to address. Just as Swift could not have written “A Modest Proposal” without the deplorable conditions in Ireland at the time, Barry Blitt could not have created the cover for the New Yorker without the existence of the lies being told about the Obamas. Irony depends on an incongruity or discordance between what is said (or, in the case of art, communicated) and what is meant. According to recent polls, about 20 percent of those who will vote in the upcoming election are unaware of Blitt’s ironic intent. They don’t know that the joke is on them.

Irony can be understood only when the observer understands the incongruity. Without starvation in Ireland, Swift’s “A Modest Proposal” would not have made sense. Without the lies about the Obamas, Blitt’s cover for the New Yorker would not have made sense. When one is unaware of the starvation, Swift’s proposal seems anything but modest. When one thinks that the lies about the Obamas are true, one can’t know that the joke is on them.

For one reason or another, I find myself thinking of Don Miguel Ruiz’s agreement: “Be impeccable in your word.” That would certainly solve a lot of the world’s current problems, wouldn’t it….

joel@scs-matters.com
www.scs-matters.com