Did the Internet kill satire?

I suspect as much, but I can't prove it. The point is, satire is dead and buried, at least in the U.S. How else to explain the fact that the Christwire.org website is considered a satirical site, let alone a "really, actually, very excellent" one, to quote Rachel Maddow?

Yes, I know the site isn't for real, but it doesn't logically follow that its content constitutes satire. There is, after all--or used to be--a lot of difference between pretending and satirizing. Maybe not today.

Anyway, it seems that Rachel (or someone on her staff) read and believed a hoax piece at Christwire, which she quoted from on her show. She later apologized on air, pointing out the piece in question was actually a "brilliant piece of satire." Christwire answered with another hoax entry called "Rachel Maddow Wants a Boehner." That should help you gauge the brilliance and originality of the site.

Not to sound mean, but whoever mistook the crank Christwire post for a serious piece should be fired without delay--I mean, doesn't the very title of the site (Christwire) raise red flags? The Internet is glutted with pretend Christian-right sites of a similar "satirical" nature, on which scatological mockery of the "Borat"/WFMU variety is stuck up in the hopes that someone will fall for it--a short visit to the joint reveals that Christwire is dime a dozen, no more sophomoric or apostrophe-challenged than the next. But you'd think Rachel and/or her people would have enough Net-surfing experience to recognize this challenged genre a thousand clicks away. In fact, I'd forgive them for mistaking Christwire's story for a real one if they'd rebut the "brilliant piece of satire" stuff and admit that today's crude and stupid facsimiles thereof are an insult to the heroes of that form, from Swift to Bob and Ray.

Meanwhile, Keith Olbermann has a blog, and it's not very good. I'm a bleeding-heart liberal (sorry if you didn't know that), and I'm on Keith's wavelength, but I don't think he's much of a writer--there's more facile progressive prose to be found at Huffington Post. In fact--and God forgive me for saying such a thing--Keith's stiff and cliched sentences seem better suited to Huff's comment section. (Yes, at their worse, they're that bad.) Olbermann's a great TV personality, though, and the good news is that he's returning to that medium. There's no requirement for him to shine in every setting.