That great satirist Peter Cook was once asked if he thought that satire had a political effect. He said:
Absolutely. The greatest satire of the twentieth century was the Weimar cabaret, and they stopped Hitler in his tracks.
Attributed to Stephen Colbert, in a Rolling Stone interview, thanks to Blog Them Out of the Stone Age.
That’s a great link, thank you.
And thank you for the web, DARPA. Funny how a medium devised for disseminating hierarchical orders has created the so-called ‘horizontal information ecology’.
Funny, also, the amount of military doctrine that gets debated online. The staff colleges can’t keep up, but their imprimatur doesn’t matter any more — apart from getting the proverbial ‘tick in the box’.
Funny, a ‘network-centric’ miltary that aspires to be what Toffler called ‘third wave’, is still wedded to ‘second wave’ education and training. But they still want to fight in a ‘third wave’ way. Can we all say ‘cognitive dissonance’, kids?
(I can’t believe I’ve used that much despicable management-speak — however ‘ironically’ — in my own free time. Please kill me.)
Reminds me that satirist Tom Lehrer quit when they gave Henry Kissinger the Nobel peace prize. He claimed it was unfair competition.
Thanks for the pointer, Matthew, yes a great reference. Love your work.