SPINE

Sunday, July 29, 2012

A modest proposal: avoid homosexuals



In 1729 Jonathan Swift composed a satirical essay in the Juvenalian vein. It was called A Modest Proposal for Preventing the Children of Poor People From Being a Burden on Their Parents or Country, and for Making Them Beneficial to the Publick.

Swift lashed out against the prevalent Irish policy that led to impoverishment, starvation and famine in the British colony of Ireland. But the lashing out was veiled in heavy sarcasm; cannibalism--a suggestion that the Irish eat their children so they didn't have to feed them--was the Swiftian solution to the problem of poverty in Ireland.

The video entitled The Homosexual Menace is in the Swiftian mode. An egghead of a viewer might just not get the satire and might literally take the video to be an attack on homosexuality.

I had thought that the Swiftian satire was dead. Good to know that it's alive and well.

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