The other day I opined on the difference between irony, sarcasm, wit, humor and satire.
I defined satire as “the art of ridiculing somebody in power (possibly using irony, sarcasm, wit or humor as weapons).”
Well, a great cultural moment–dare I say a backlash, an insurrection, a turning point (insert your own metaphor)?–has just arrived. It is [...]
Posts Tagged as ‘Steve Jobs’
December 1, 2008
Revolution: Satire ends tyrannical reign of Steve Jobs
September 1, 2008
The suffering of Frida Kahlo
I popped into the Frida Kahlo exhibition currently at the San Francisco MOMA. Mainly, to see her piercing paintings–and boy, do they pierce–but also, at least in part, as research for my book.
A friend of ours, Erika Lessey Chen, had suggested Kahlo to me a year ago as a possible life-story to look into. I [...]
August 27, 2008
Biden and Demosthenes: A tale of two stammerers
As I was watching Beau Biden (video below) and his father Joe at the Democratic Convention today, I was struck by a stunning parallel between Senator Biden’s remarkable life story and that of the ancient Greek orator Demosthenes.
Both were stammerers in their youth. Both were taunted for it with cutting nicknames–”dash” for Biden, since he [...]
July 27, 2008
The end of book publishing? Part II
I return to one of my threads, which is: What on earth were you smoking, Andreas, when you decided to write … a book?!?
So this is the second in what promises to become a series of occasional musings about the book industry, the first being here. As you can tell, there is an ongoing tug-of-war [...]
July 22, 2008
Impostor Disaster, part I: Steve Jobs
Back to the book: Remember, the whole book is a long story woven around Rudyard Kipling’s poetic insight that triumph and disaster are impostors. I want to lead up to the main character, Hannibal, with a few other examples, and today Steve Jobs comes to mind. I saw him on a stage last month, launching [...]
