We, the people

The other day, I turned to The Onion , as usual, to get my daily dose of cutting edge news, and saw that they had a breaking story about a hostage situation developing in the Capitol. The Onion — you might know — is an online magazine of wit and satire, but their stories are rarely any more incredible than the rest of the media. This particular story was rather outré even by their relaxed standards, but I read it with an amused chuckle, with a tolerant “newspapers will be newspapers” kind of smile. I did think the picture of John Boehner holding a gun to a child's head was a triumph of Photoshop; a kind of latter-day Kodak moment allowed to mature to its full potential under the restless fingers of some pimply graphic designer.

Imagine my consternation, then, as I read the very next day that that story had triggered a major panic, with hordes of hysterical parents rushing to the capital to check whether their kids were all right. I heard of one frantic couple that drove all the way from New Jersey to Washington DC, even after seeing their only child sitting in utter boredom in their living room watching TV. When it comes to the children, one never can be too safe, can one? No, one can't.

AMPLIFIED FEAR

This is the sad state of post-9/11 America, where satire and news are well nigh indistinguishable from each other, and everyone and his dog is in a perpetual state of orange-alert, just waiting to be scared out of his living wits by the next bogeyman sauntering around the corner.

If there isn't a bogeyman handy, the media isn't above creating one to tide things over — panic delayed is panic denied, after all. It's a well-reported statistic that falling down the stairs kills more Americans every year than terrorism. After reading that, my own staircase resembles Osama bin Laden more with each passing day. Had I known that I would be living in such close proximity to imminent life-threatening danger, I would've purchased a tent instead. As it is, I run up the stairs sometimes just to tempt fate. I'm waiting impatiently for one of the cable networks to come up with the story that staircases were introduced into suburbia as part of a dastardly al-Qaeda plot to lure innocent Americans to their deaths.

Fear and anger are in plentiful supply these days. It is clear that the economy and the country as a whole are in bad shape. No one in government seems to know what to do, and even if they did, it's increasingly doubtful that they could bring themselves to actually do anything. President Obama, who swept into the Oval Office on a tidal wave of relief that the dark days of the Bush presidency were finally over, increasingly resembles The Decider in everything except his ability to decide anything. Small wonder, then, that we the people are dazed and confused.

SURREAL PROTESTS

Living in San Francisco, I see more than my fair share of protests at any time. Recently, however, the protests have taken on a rather surreal tone. In the past few weeks, I've seen several large throngs of people looking very organised and carrying banners and protest signs, shouting out of megaphones. Yet in all the cases, when I did approach and ask them what they were protesting, the people I asked seemed taken aback, as if the need to protest was a self-evident truth and details such as what exactly they were protesting were irrelevant and somehow indecent to bring up.

In one instance, a sprightly young woman told me they were protesting against the big banks, but didn't seem too clear on what the banks had done wrong. Another group of people were protesting that young urbanites aren't able to find jobs. This was a very young, and rather angry crowd. Their slogans and shouts seemed militant but again, it wasn't clear exactly what they were protesting against. Perhaps it was the big banks again, but given that banks are the only outfits hiring anyone these days, that would not have been a smart choice. In any case, threats aren't the most reliable means to get hired, but I refrained from pointing that out since they didn't look too amenable to persuasion.

When real life resembles satire, it's small wonder that satire gets mistaken for real life. It's Life imitating Art imitating Life… or, some such thing; I'm confused. At any rate, since The Onion is now into the hard news and fear-mongering business, I've been looking around for a new source of daily satire, ribald humour, and demagoguery masquerading as analysis. I haven't had to look far; most of the major channel news networks seem to fit the bill, and I'm spoiled for choice. Right now, I'm looking at Fox News.

(The author is a San Francisco-based techie.)

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