Lest it be said that I only transcribe Slate’s Culturefest for the sake of criticism, I wanted to highlight this insight from Stephen Metcalf from last week:

…The real function of satire right now in American life, which is sort of two-pronged. One is it’s a psychic compensation for those of us who look at American public life and regard it as insane, ridiculous, and completely unsatisfying. By way of compensation, we tune into Colbert and the Daily Show, and maybe whatever other sources, Saturday Night Live. And we laugh. I don’t want to minimize that at all, but as an agent of change, or a place to place one’s political hopes, I think one is going to walk away extremely amused and very disappointed.

And then secondly it’s an avenue of forgiveness for everybody in American life almost regardless of what they’ve done. I mean one half expects to turn on Saturday Night Live and discover that Charles Manson is hosting and doing funny skits about Sharon Tate and we’re all expected to forgive him. The ability to poke fun at yourself has become now a universal absolution really in American life. And the best example being George Bush, who takes us on a hopeless war that kills thousands of Americans and god knows how many Iraqis, and somehow he’s still likable because he can make fun of himself because he makes a short film skitting about how he can’t find the weapons of mass destruction…There is a way – Dana am I completely wrong about this, am I just being a total grouch – there is a way in which satire has become politically neutralizing, which is exactly the opposite of what it’s supposed to be.

No, Stephen, you are not just being a total grouch. Beyond that, I’ll just say for now that I’m ambivalent about prong #1, and I totally agree about prong #2.