While poking around the Facebooks this morning, I clicked on a link a friend posted to the satire website The National Report, and I'm intentionally not linking to them. Because I don't enjoy them. It's not that I don't enjoy good satire or comedy, it's...that...I don't think they're very good at it. Like the Daily Currant, the National Report.comes up with absurd premises, but they don't take their articles to the point where they're both thought-provoking enough to be relevant and outrageous enough to be clearly satirical (unless you're completely myopic). For an outstanding example of brilliant, relevant, outrageous, thought-provoking satire, see The Onion's article about 9/11 hijackers and their surprise to find themselves in Hell.So I was mentally pretty open to the headline on the Tucson Weekly claiming that not everyone on the internet can write satire. Failed satire does become clutter. These articles are noise. I often find myself in the position of having to point out that something posted as an "OMG CAN YOU EVEN BELIEVE THIS???" article is, in fact, failed satire, false, and not part of the legitimate conversation. I really wanted to like the Tucson Weekly article, I did.Only...dude...you sound like the nerdy kid in school who's pissed that the smart-ass gets all the attention, so you're taking your pen and showing 'em all. ALL! Let 'em have it, Holden Caulfield.

♦ IF you or anyone you know has gone anywhere within the internet in the last 10 years and hasn't figured out that Andy Borowitz and his eponymous report are satirical, then you need to get out more often. He writes like a dream come true and is always over-the-top funny.

♦ IF you're going to talk about all the clutter and distraction on the internet, then for pity's sake, you (or your editor) ought to have the sense not to run a link to an article (and in fact, your news organ's own article) about the newest video featuring Keyboard Cat.

♦ IF you're going to argue that satire that fails to launch muddies the waters of journalistic integrity, and you sniffingly look down your nose at misfired satire while you define yourself as a capital-J Journalist, then really, you ought not to end your op-ed piece by calling the writers you don't like "dicks". Because adolescent name-calling is the earmark of professionalism (only, opposite).

I actually checked to make sure that I wasn't stuck in some meta-satire spiral and that this article wasn't the culmination of some perfect storm of failed satire the likes of which the world has never before seen. But no, to the best of my ability to understand, this article is real, and the Tucson Weekly is not a wannabe-Onion-style news outlet. Students, take note: this entire article is an exercise in how to undermine your own point. What this guy does? Don't do.Now, here's Keyboard Cat to play us out with his brilliant new "96 Tears".[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LWOYM9R7QGE]