Satire is the Best Revenge

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you ...
-- Rudyard Kipling

The pen is mightier than the sword.

   One of the most important characteristics of a good reporter is to have a thick skin, especially when politicians attack a straight, neutral recitation of factual information as "fake news."
   Sometimes that's hard to do. People have a natural inclination to strike back when they are criticized, but journalists have a more potent weapon -- a pencil, and when strategically used, the resulting power of the press is something that no politician in a free society can overcome.
   Note the caveat: A free society. Too often, the first oppression that an incipient dictator uses is against news media.
   But as long as journalists fulfill their responsibility to keep the public informed on what politicians are up to, democracy will thrive.
   In addition to straight reporting in the face of continuing insults and accusations of bias, "made-up stories" and "fake news," there is the enormously more powerful weapon of satire.
   From Jonathan Swift's "Modest Proposal" on how to deal with poverty in 18th Century Ireland, to Mel Brooks' 1967 sendup of Nazi Germany in "The Producers" and its leading song, "Springtime for Hitler," to the continuing skits on television's "Saturday Night Live," which poke fun at the current president, satire has long been a way of generating laughter at those who endanger society.
   May it always be so.