Gina Kim
Sacramento Bee
Tuesday, January 16, 2007

The reports of its death were greatly exaggerated. Pundits declared irony dead after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, but five years later, not only is it alive -- it ruled 2006.

"Given the way the world has gone, we're in more need of irony," says Jerry Herron, a professor of English and American studies at Wayne State University in Detroit. "What 9/11 produced was a world where pettifoggery, obfuscation, half-truths and double dealing are more rampant than ever."

Irony, the grand dame of the zeitgeist, is pop culture's weapon against hopelessness, experts say. It's a tool that transfers power to the powerless. And in a time of a continuing war, citizens jailed without charges and a government that knows what we're checking out at the library and searching for on the Internet, it's a key to understanding what's happening to the world -- with a little humor, too.

"The reason irony is more fun than the truth is that it's more fun than the truth," says Herron. "Jon Stewart is fun to watch because it seems to give the feeling of being in a club where everyone's smarter than everyone else. And the whole world seems to be pretty dumb."

But what is irony? Merriam-Webster says it's using words to mean the opposite of their literal meaning. But in today's cultural climate, irony is anything said with your tongue firmly planted in your cheek. It's sarcastic humor with an exaggerated message.

"At a time when people feel they're being lied to and treated as though they're too stupid to get it, it lets you regain the claim on your own intelligence," Herron says. "I'm going to tell a lie, too, but I'm going to tell it knowingly and as a joke."

In the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Graydon Carter, editor of Vanity Fair magazine and co-founder of the defunct satirical Spy magazine, was quoted as saying, "It's the end of the age of irony. Things that were considered fringe and frivolous are going to disappear."

Martin Kaplan, associate dean of the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California, says: "It probably was about six months that that lasted. Irony is very much alive and well."

It's an era in which comedian Stephen Colbert's ironic roast of President Bush at a White House correspondents dinner is now legend. And, according to a study by Harvard University's Institute of Politics, more 18- to 24-year-olds watch "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart" than read the print edition of a major newspaper.

"It's become very hard to figure out what is real and what isn't," says stand-up comic Marc Maron. "By nature of that, there's more irony.

"That's why fake news is resonating much more with people than the real news," he says. "Because when you can exaggerate or be sarcastic or be ironic, the real message is revealed. "People don't like honesty. They find it boring or too draining for them to engage with," Maron says. "If something's put across in a smug or condescending way, it's got some safety built into it -- you can take it in, laugh at it, and it assumes you're in on the joke."

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