Satire in the NYTimes

Many of us in class adore The Daily Show and the Colbert Report. I'm sure we've all read an Onion fake news article recently and perhaps have even chuckled at the occasional New Yorker comic strip. What all of these have in common is a shared platform of comedy. We know to expect comedy from each of these sources. That is why I find it particularly delightful and surprising when the Opinion section of the New York Times gets a little sassy.

This week, the NYTimes writer David Javerbaum wrote a piece called "A Quantum Theory of Mitt Romney", which expertly and cheekily deconstructs Romney's strange web of policy and declares him the first "quantum politician".

Alluding to the "Etch A Sketch" gaffe made by Romney's campaign adviser, Javerbaum comforts Mr. Fehrnstorm by assuring him that, the "impulse to analogize is understandable. Metaphors like these, inexact as they are, are the only way the layman can begin to grasp the strange phantom world that underpins the very fabric of not only the Romney campaign but also of Mitt Romney in general."

Javerbaum explains : "Under these Newtonian principles, a candidate’s position on an issue tends to stay at rest until an outside force — the Tea Party, say, or a six-figure credit line at Tiffany — compels him to alter his stance, at a speed commensurate with the size of the force (usually large) and in inverse proportion to the depth of his beliefs (invariably negligible). This alteration, framed as a positive by the candidate, then provokes an equal but opposite reaction among his rivals. But the Romney candidacy represents literally a quantum leap forward. It is governed by rules that are bizarre and appear to go against everyday experience and common sense."

He then describes how Romney fits into the quantum theory rules of probability, complementarity, entanglement, noncausality, duality, and my favorite, uncertainty ("...frustrating as it may be, the rules of quantum campaigning dictate that no human being can ever simultaneously know both what Mitt Romney’s current position is and where that position will be at some future date. This is known as the “principle uncertainty principle...").

Is this cynical? A little. But every good comic knows that things are only ever funny when truth is present.

Do you know of other surprising examples of satire in serious periodicals like the New York Times? Please share!