The following is an excerpt from OpinionJournal.com’s “Best of the Web” written by the editor, James Taranto.
Pity the Parodist
The U.S. Navy’s Easter rescue of freighter captain Richard Phillips, and the killing of three of the pirates who’d been holding him, did not engender warm feelings for America among the pirate community. Commentary’s Abe Greenwald had a post late yesterday riffing off a New York Times article quoting piratical threats of revenge:
This is pirate blowback! Did the president think we could use billion-dollar equipment to shoot some raggedy ransom-seekers out of their rowboat without inviting retaliation? By flaunting our material superiority we merely whet their appetites for treasure. And by demonstrating that we value one American life more than three Somali lives we’ve turned a handful of desperate thieves into a sympathetic movement with recruitment potential.
And all for the sake of one seized ship??? . . . Let’s face it: on Sunday, we only created more pirates.
This is quite funny–but alas, through no fault of Greenwald’s, it is not as funny as this passage from a Washington Post story:
The killing of the three pirates by the U.S. military could worsen the problem, military officials said. Statements made Monday by people who identified themselves as pirates seemed to bolster that view.
This is funnier because it’s presented as a serious news story. It’s hard to believe anyone could write “statements made Monday by people who identified themselves as pirates” without humorous intent, but the deadpan delivery is simply brilliant. No parodist could improve on it.
Then there’s the piece that showed up yesterday on the Puffington Host under the title “You Are Being Lied to About Pirates.” The author, Johann Hari, actually takes a pro-pirate line:
Pirates were the first people to rebel against this world. They mutinied against their tyrannical captains–and created a different way of working on the seas. Once they had a ship, the pirates elected their captains, and made all their decisions collectively. They shared their bounty out in what Rediker calls “one of the most egalitarian plans for the disposition of resources to be found anywhere in the eighteenth century.” They even took in escaped African slaves and lived with them as equals.
If yesterday’s pirates were champions of the oppressed, today’s, Hari claims, are just looking out for the environment:
They call themselves the Volunteer Coastguard of Somalia–and it’s not hard to see why. In a surreal telephone interview, one of the pirate leaders, Sugule Ali, said their motive was “to stop illegal fishing and dumping in our waters. . . . We don’t consider ourselves sea bandits. We consider sea bandits [to be] those who illegally fish and dump in our seas and dump waste in our seas and carry weapons in our seas.”
Maybe Hari is kidding, but probably not. His article originally appeared in January, in the Independent, the left-wing London paper that is also home to America-hating polemicist and 9/11 “truther” Robert Fisk, who routinely says things that are just as preposterous but definitely not intended as humor.
Oh well, just because it’s not meant as a joke doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy it as one. If there’s one thing we’ve learned in all our years of writing the column, it is this: If you’re not sure whether to laugh or cry, laugh.
For more “Best of the Web” click here and look for the “Best of the Web Today” link in the middle column below “Today’s Columnists.
