Amid crisis, laughter takes a licking
The latest casualty of the coronavirus: The annual “Lick the Mayor” event in Nanaimo. According to the Nanaimo Beacon, the popular fundraiser at Maffeo Sutton Park has been postponed due to the health authority’s new edict that “Anywhere more than 50 people are gathered, group-licking shall be curtailed, effective immediately.”
Fortunately, the Beacon said, Mayor Leonard Krog has agreed to an alternative in which people may pay $2.99 a minute to lick him “virtually” via video-conference.
The Beacon story also linked to an earlier piece in which it reported that Nanaimo city council had rejected Island Health’s choice for a COVID-19 quarantine site (a local hospital) in favour of “the shed behind Dave’s house.”
All this would be remarkable if A) Dave, a commercial welder from Cedar, actually existed, which he doesn’t, and B) there were, in fact, a newspaper called the Nanaimo Beacon, which there isn’t.
There is an Onion-like website called Nanaimobeacon.com, though. It’s where you find stories with headlines like “Conservative Party leader launches ‘Good Kids, Good Guns’ program in Nanaimo” and “Hospital to replace doctors with parents who have done their research.”
The content is, obviously, satirical.
Or, at least, it should be obvious. Some people go off their nuts when they react to the Beacon’s headlines without actually reading the stories. Then, when the truth dawns, they grumble about “fake news,” though there’s a big difference between fake news, which is meant to mislead, and satire, which is meant to do the opposite. Satire just revels in the absurd.
I don’t know who is behind the Beacon. When I tried phoning the number listed on the website all I got was a fuzzy recording of Rick Astley singing Never Gonna Give You Up, which was catchy, but unhelpful. A Facebook message proved more fruitful, though even then whoever wrote back wouldn’t reveal his or her identity.
He/she did respond to a question about the value of what the Beacon does, though. “Satire has an important civic role to play as a kind of release valve for people’s pent-up emotions, fears, anger and panic,” the reply read. “Hence the COVID-19 piece.”
In other words, satire lightens the load, provides a counterweight that stops us from going too far in the other direction. That’s a valuable lesson right now, when the cumulative effect of nonstop coronavirus coverage, amplified by every single post in your social media feed, can all too easily instil a sense of dread (or at least an urge to load up on six years worth of toilet paper; honestly, once our health crisis abates we’ll still be left with a math emergency). The unknown is a scary place. It’s too easy to let unfettered imaginations go too far, when in reality we need to bring them back home (and quarantine them for 14 days). Humour helps restore reason.
Some will balk at that, arguing there’s nothing funny about COVID-19, but this isn’t about making light of the outbreak, it’s about coping with it. “Often the darkest, driest gallows humour comes from the places where things are taken the most seriously — newsrooms, operating rooms, police stations,” wrote the person at the Beacon.
In addition to being a source of unrelenting toxicity and terror, Twitter has been a gold mine. “On a positive note, the 1993 heartwarming comedy Dave is available on iTunes,” wrote the @OakBayGazette satirical account Saturday. “It’s a fantasy about an unqualified guy who becomes president, and does a GOOD job. Five stars!”
That followed an earlier post: “Remember when we were all talking about the people camped on the steps of the legislature? Ah, good times.”
Another local parody account, @BCFerrys (not to be confused with the @BCFerries real deal) chimed in with “We recommend washing your hands for at least one hour and 35 minutes. Singing Roger Whittaker’s Greatest
Hits (both volumes) is just about right.”
This came from Vancouver writer Steve Burgess: “Cineplex theatres remain open. However, out of an abundance of caution screenings of all Tom Hanks movies are cancelled until further notice.”
The late-night guys have been having fun, too. “Lori Loughlin is wondering how the coronavirus got into Princeton and her kid didn’t,” posted Conan O’Brien. “At a time like this, we all need to be together,” said Stephen Colbert, “from a distance of about 20 feet.”