Something new happened in satire in 2022. I was very struck by it when it appeared in the paper in February. It was a story in the world pages. I tore it out – there were articles on the back about Covid restrictions in New South Wales, and the discovery that thousands of baptisms performed by a Catholic priest in Phoenix have been ruled invalid - and put it in my top drawer. It had a black kind of magic to it when it was published and it took on an even darker, far more ominous shade as the year progressed.
We think of satire as an attack on the powerful, a blade or a boot swung upwards, directed by harmless bystanders (Hello, I’m Steve and I’m a satirist). We think of the great Dunedin-born cartoonist David Low, put on Hitler’s death list for his drawings of the Nazi fuhrer as pathetic and deranged. We think of Alec Baldwin’s impersonations of Trump as pathetic and deranged. We accept that nothing is changed as a result of satirising political leaders, but love its tradition, its ancient practice, its instinct to have a bit of fun, malicious or affectionate, with those who rule our world.
But the news story I clipped out of the paper on February 16 was satire from the other direction. It was satire from the top. It was satire from people who are neither harmless nor bystanding, and were in fact standing very close to the centre of the action, where decisions are made that affect lives, that have the power to end lives. It was satire from officials close to someone who is the most pathetic and deranged ruler in the world in 2022: Putin.
The story was headlined, “Sarcasm is Kremlin’s weapon.” The story, which came through the AP agency, was published on the brink of the war on Ukraine. It quoted Russian Foreign Affairs spokesperson Maria Zakharova, and Russia’s ambassador to the European Union, Vladimir Chizhov. Good to see the binary genders evenly represented. Both were united in their scorn at the very idea Russia would do anything as insane as actually invade Ukraine. No way, they said, laughing.
Maria asked the “mass media of disinformation” in the West “to reveal the schedule of our ‘invasions’. I’d like to plan my vacations.”