Righting Satire?

I can't help but keep coming back to this 'Coolservative' cobblers. The saddest aspect of this shite is that I first encountered it on the Satiresearch homepage. Now, this is a truly bizarre juxtaposition of elements - a site which claims to be the leading aggregator of satire headlines promoting not just a party political cause, but a conservative party political cause. Bearing in mind that most of the headlines aggregated there are parodying, in some shape or form, the conservative US government, not to mention the faux-conservative New Labour regime in Britain, is it really conceivable that many people sympathetic to Cameron's spin on conservatism are likely to be visiting the site? Are many of the visitors really likely to be converted to the cause? I think not. Sadly, this development represents the final degradation of a once highly innovative and influential site. The first blow came when it lost most of its best sources to Humorfeed and had to substitute second-string sites, but overtly linking it to the pathetic cause of the Cameronites must surely be the death knell!

All of which raises the question of whether you can actually have conservative satire? Like it or not, satire has traditionally come from a radical/liberal/Left-wing perspective - not surprising as satire is dedicated to lampooning the status quo. As conservatism, by its very nature, is dedicated to conserving the status quo, it and satire have never really been bedfellows. Having said that, I do think that it is possible to write satirically from a right of centre perspective, lampooning the received wisdoms and established norms of the left. However, as with the more usual centre-left based satire, it needs to be divorced from a party political perspective. This is my problem with the overt linking of the 'Coolservative' cause with Satiresearch - it is just another crude Cameronite attempt at making the clapped-out credo of Toryism seem 'trendy' and 'relevant' by spuriously linking it to some more popular cause or activity.

Ultimately, this match made in hell isn't going to help either Satiresearch or the 'Coolservative' party. However, if we're lucky, it might just speed up the inevitable decline and fall of the once proud Satiresearch. Really, it is a travestry of its former self and this attempt to harness the forces of satire to Cameron's bandwagon simply emphasise the moral bankruptcy of its current owners, who clearly neither understand, nor care about, satire.