"Satire"

Dictionary.com defines satire as follows:

a literary composition, in verse or prose, in which human folly and vice are held up to scorn, derision, or ridicule.

Wikipedia’s entry for satire reveals the following:

In satire, vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, ideally with the intent of shaming individuals, and society itself, into improvement. Although satire is usually meant to be funny, its greater purpose is constructive social criticism, using wit as a weapon.

Now, without the benefit of context, see if you can find the satire in the following:

Dear Mr. Lincoln -- We Coloreds have taken a vote and decided that we don't cotton to that whole emancipation thing. Freedom means having to work for real, think for ourselves, and take consequences along with the rewards. That is just far too much to ask of us Colored People and we demand that it stop! …

Perhaps the most racist point of all in the tea parties is their demand that government "stop raising our taxes." That is outrageous! How will we Colored People ever get a wide screen TV in every room if non-coloreds get to keep what they earn? Totally racist! The tea party expects coloreds to be productive members of society?

This is from the full text of a “letter” written by Tea Party Express leader Mark Williams, a radio talk show host and CNN’s favorite spokesman for the Tea Party movement, on his blog, in response to a recent resolution adopted by the NAACP that calls for the Tea Party movement to repudiate its “racist elements.”

The letter, which Williams has since been taken down due to criticism from within the Tea Party movement itself, was intended as satire. But where is the intent to push the NAACP and/or the people it represents into improvement, or the construction social criticism? Meanwhile, CNN reports that the National Tea Party Federation has booted the Tea Party Express and Williams from its ranks.

File this under the same heading as their calling Obama both a Nazi and a Stalinist. Stay classy, guys!