This "satire" is over the top and in extreme bad taste:

[hedgehog]

A Modest Proposal


For Preventing The Children of Poor People in Ireland
From Being Aburden to Their Parents or Country, and
For Making Them Beneficial to The Public


By Jonathan Swift (1729)

.....
But my intention is very far from being confined to provide only for the children of professed beggars; it is of a much greater extent, and shall take in the whole number of infants at a certain age who are born of parents in effect as little able to support them as those who demand our charity in the streets.

”I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled ...”

.....
I shall now therefore humbly propose my own thoughts, which I hope will not be liable to the least objection.

I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee or a ragout.

I do therefore humbly offer it to public consideration that of the hundred and twenty thousand children already computed, twenty thousand may be reserved for breed, whereof only one-fourth part to be males; which is more than we allow to sheep, black cattle or swine; and my reason is, that these children are seldom the fruits of marriage, a circumstance not much regarded by our savages, therefore one male will be sufficient to serve four females. That the remaining hundred thousand may, at a year old, be offered in the sale to the persons of quality and fortune through the kingdom; always advising the mother to let them suck plentifully in the last month, so as to render them plump and fat for a good table. A child will make two dishes at an entertainment for friends; and when the family dines alone, the fore or hind quarter will make a reasonable dish, and seasoned with a little pepper or salt will be very good boiled on the fourth day, especially in winter.

I have reckoned upon a medium that a child just born will weigh 12 pounds, and in a solar year, if tolerably nursed, increaseth to 28 pounds.

I grant this food will be somewhat dear, and therefore very proper for landlords, who, as they have already devoured most of the parents, seem to have the best title to the children.

Infant's flesh will be in season throughout the year, but more plentiful in March, and a little before and after; for we are told by a grave author, an eminent French physician, that fish being a prolific diet, there are more children born in Roman Catholic countries about nine months after Lent than at any other season; therefore, reckoning a year after Lent, the markets will be more glutted than usual, because the number of popish infants is at least three to one in this kingdom: and therefore it will have one other collateral advantage, by lessening the number of papists among us.

I have already computed the charge of nursing a beggar's child (in which list I reckon all cottagers, laborers, and four-fifths of the farmers) to be about two shillings per annum, rags included; and I believe no gentleman would repine to give ten shillings for the carcass of a good fat child, which, as I have said, will make four dishes of excellent nutritive meat, when he hath only some particular friend or his own family to dine with him. Thus the squire will learn to be a good landlord, and grow popular among his tenants; the mother will have eight shillings net profit, and be fit for work till she produces another child.

Those who are more thrifty (as I must confess the times require) may flay the carcass; the skin of which artificially dressed will make admirable gloves for ladies, and summer boots for fine gentlemen.

As to our city of Dublin, shambles may be appointed for this purpose in the most convenient parts of it, and butchers we may be assured will not be wanting; although I rather recommend buying the children alive, and dressing them hot from the knife, as we do roasting pigs.

http://art-bin.com/art/omodest.htm




Art Spiegelman made some interesting comments today on Talk of the Nation. He pointed out that not all irony is funny. He also compared the New Yorker cover to a vaccination. It's painful, but it puts out in front of everyone the muck that's been floating around just beneath the surface and forces us to talk about it. Personally, I found the cover not so much amusing as so over-the-top as to ridicule all the rumors and charges ("Michelle Obama is an angry black woman":eyes: - that's a falsehood that the MSM considers polite enough to use!)

[ColbertWatcher]

1. A modest kick & rec...

...however, having a little experience with the tone-deafness of people when it comes to satire, modern Americans might actually wonder when this program is to begin and suggest certain of their neighbors volunteer.

[madeline_con]

2. "... forces us to talk about it ..."

I think the author made his point.

[Raine]

3. Unfortunately the fine art of both

satire and sarcasm is lost on the vast majority of people and they take it just as it "appears". Even here in the DU without the sarcasm smiley people don't get "it".

[hedgehog]

4. I think Spiegelman made an interesting statement when he reminded

us that irony isn't necessarily funny.

[tomreedtoon]

5. Swift was bitter, and probably a Catholic hater.

And according to one person I read (the late music critic Gene Lees) "A lot of people thought he meant it. Perhaps, in a bitter and angry way, he did."

I remember my Irish mother telling me that the Irish were considered worse than black people early in the 20th Century. So yes, I could see that if Swift were an artist, he would draw an Irishman getting drunk, and beating his wife, while dozens of his children crawled around on the floor.

"I'm not being insulting, I'm showing how silly is the prejudice against those damn Micks - er, Irishmen!"

[hedgehog]

6. I think it's a fair bet that Swift didn't much like anyone!

Gulliver and an unnamed Houyhnhnm

[skip fox]

7. I'm right with you! Satire is satire and if some people take it as truth,

as some people here are worried about (it'll confirm some of the wackos' narratives), then it gives us an oppertunity to educate them or show them for the chuckleheads they are. At any rate, a dialogue can occur about this rather than letting the wackos gab and pull in the gullible without comment from us.

At any rate, it was intelligent if simple and executed directly. Not high art, but 98%better than almost anything else we see in the popular culture.

And I'm ALL FOR intelligence.