Steve Braunias: Secret Diary of 2016

One word, one chaotic, depressing syllable: Trump. Photo / AP

All of the available evidence rather suggests that the story of satire in 2016 was the old story of how satire has zero impact on the world.

One word, one chaotic, depressing syllable: Trump. The Donald was the subject of a lot of satire and a lot of it seemed really funny at the time but it didn't mount up to a hill of beans. Humour vs tragedy, the winner is always going to be tragedy.

You even had the strange spectacle of Michael Stipe from REM blaming Trump's election triumph on Alec Baldwin's satirical impersonations on TV show Saturday Night Live. "I blame media completely for it, including Saturday Night Live," he said. "It's satire, it's brilliantly done, but it's still adding to the push of ... Warhol said, I think, there's no such thing as bad publicity."

I don't think Warhol said that. Stipe probably means the Warhol chestnut about everyone being famous for 15 minutes, which is much the same thing - kind of. Anyway his remarks raised some interesting points not just about how ineffective and useless and counter-productive satire is, but also about satire's relationship with power.

Satire laughs at power. Good. But the point of satire is to refuse to take things seriously, and that was the essential failing of the satirical impulse when it came to Trump; he wasn't taken seriously, he was seen as entertainment, a clown to laugh at - his hair, his mouth, his nose-sniffing, crack ho impersonation in the debates!

He never was funny, not for a second. He was plotting and dangerous, and he got what satire wanted: the last laugh.

I only ever reluctantly included Trump in the secret diary in 2016. He scared the hell out of me. Easier, and within range, to write about New Zealand politicians. They're genuinely funny because they're not really capable of inflicting particularly serious damage, even though some of them try.

As people they're all basically that greatest character in all of satire - Pooter, the bumbling clerk in the Victorian classic, The Diary of a Nobody. Key as Pooter, Little as Pooter, Peters as Pooter, all well-meaning little bureaucrats charging around with their office politics and their trivial pursuits.

Key was the most Pooter of the lot. There was even a family resemblance; like Key's fictional counterpart, Charles Pooter, his son was a buffoon. And so I wrote three diaries devoted to Max Key in 2016, and four to the papa formerly known as the Prime Minister. What am I going to do without them in 2017? Bill English! God save me.

Other secret diary subjects this year included Key's radio pal Hosking, Key's here, there and everywhere mate McCaw, and Key's crazy flag bearers. Incredible there that ever was such a personage as Change the NZ Flag chairman Lewis Holden; even more absurd was the existence of Flag Consideration Panel, which had a chairman, the remarkably pompous Emeritus Professor John Burrows.

There was a public workshop roadshow! There were 25 meetings around the country with an average crowd of 30 people, including eight in New Plymouth and 10 in Christchurch! O poor unwanted stupid beachtowel. It made satire easy.

At the beginning of the year I dedicated the diaries of 2016 to a satirist who had passed away - the great Gadsby, aka Jon Gadsby of A Week Of It fame. I wonder what he would have made of the year? He would surely have cackled at the same things we all cackled at, such as Max Key, Brian Tamaki, and the Aaron Smith crisis.

But Jon was the funnyman on intimate terms with the misery and ruin of life; how would he have satirised the housing crisis? Where's the humour in homelessness? It doesn't exist. All you can do - Jon would have done the same as me, I think - was take an axe to those supremely incompetent politicians who claimed there was no crisis, that it was all good, that there was nothing to see.

From the Secret Dairy of Paula Bennett, June 19: "Staff meeting from 1pm to 1:03pm to discuss what my Ministry of Social Housing is doing to combat homelessness.

"Staff meeting from 1:03pm to 2:35pm to discuss what Auckland's Te Puea marae is doing to combat homelessness."

And this month her incompetence was rewarded with a promotion to deputy prime minister. O satire! Oh well. There's always election year.