I just finished what might be my most challenging satirical piece yet - a complete NPR Morning Edition parody about MAGA farmers romanticizing slavery while cashing government subsidy checks. The cognitive dissonance was so stark that I had to find a way to make people laugh while confronting something genuinely disturbing.
The piece started when I was listening to actual NPR Morning Edition during my coffee routine, and I started thinking about how their signature hushed, contemplative tone handles difficult subjects. Then I considered the contradiction of anti-government farmers who depend on subsidies, and how Trump's vague "restoration" rhetoric gets filled in with people's darkest fantasies.
The challenge was: How do you satirize something that's already so absurd it barely needs exaggeration? The answer was to lean into NPR's specific aesthetic - the cello swells, the whispered delivery, the way they make everything sound like a nature documentary about endangered democracy.
Getting the NPR tone right required obsessive attention to their specific linguistic patterns. That opening line - "Morning Edition began, as always, with the gentle swell of a cello, as if democracy itself was sighing" - took me forever to perfect. It needed to capture both their musical intros and their tendency toward metaphorical language.
Audie Cornish's "hushed tone usually reserved for describing endangered birds" was my attempt to show how NPR treats serious political topics with the same reverent whisper they use for everything from poetry to pandas. There's something both admirable and slightly ridiculous about maintaining that tone when discussing something as horrific as slavery nostalgia.
Creating Curtis Weller, the farmer who calls slavery "patriot apprenticeship," was walking a tightrope. He needed to sound authentically rural without being a caricature, and his logic needed to be coherent within his own twisted worldview while being obviously insane to everyone else.
The detail about him wearing a "Keep the Government Out of Farming" shirt while having received $73,000 in subsidies was crucial - it shows the fundamental hypocrisy that makes these characters so satirically rich. The off-mic comment from his neighbor about not being able to keep goats in the fence was my way of undermining his authority through community knowledge.
I loved creating Dr. Strauss's line about "democracy suffocating in a corn silo." Academic experts on NPR always have these perfectly crafted metaphors that somehow make horrible things sound poetic. "They're recasting slavery as nostalgia" captures the euphemistic language that's used to make unthinkable things thinkable.
The phrase "gaslighting — except it comes with free soybeans" was my attempt to show how material benefits can make people complicit in their own manipulation. It's funny but also genuinely unsettling.
Creating those "Patriot Apprenticeship" brochures was darkly fun. "Sunrise fieldwork" and "mandatory patriot lectures" sound almost wholesome until you realize what's being described. The fine print about complaints being "categorized as treason" shows how quickly these fantasies turn authoritarian.
This kind of detail work is what makes satire effective - it's not enough to point out the absurdity, you have to show how it would actually function in practice.
The NPR-commissioned poll was my favorite part to write. When 21% of respondents said "cotton" in response to "What does restoration mean to you?" - that's not even a joke, that's just revealing what's already there in people's minds.
Harriet James's analysis - "When one in five voters equates restoration with cotton, it's no longer an agricultural policy. It's a plantation playlist" - captures how euphemistic political language can't hide the underlying intentions.
The failed rally chant "Soybeans, subsidies, and slavery!" breaking down because "the rhythm didn't work" was my way of showing how these movements are often as incompetent as they are evil. Evil can be banal and poorly organized.
The image of "a county fair crossed with a Civil War reenactment nobody rehearsed for" where "half the people brought pitchforks, the other half brought corn dogs" captures the mixture of menace and buffoonery that characterizes so much contemporary political theater.
"It's democracy's death scored for woodwinds" might be the line I'm most proud of in the entire piece. It encapsulates NPR's aesthetic approach while acknowledging the gravity of what's being described. Democracy doesn't always die with jackboots - sometimes it dies with gentle music and thoughtful analysis.
The fake quotes from Seinfeld, Ron White, and Sarah Silverman each needed to capture their distinct voices:
Seinfeld's observational "worst farm-to-table menu in history" is pure his comedy DNA
Ron White's "Smallpox blankets and chain gangs?" has his trademark dark cynicism
Silverman's "Ken Burns documentary with banjos" perfectly captures how NPR can make anything sound contemplative
Each comedian would approach this horror differently, but they'd all recognize the absurdity.
Including the link to the more direct bohiney.com/maga-farmers-believe-they-are-getting-their-black-slaves-back/ piece was important - it shows that this isn't just abstract satirical play. There are people who actually believe these things, and sometimes satirical indirection isn't enough.
The ending disclaimer about being written by "a professor who footnotes even his jokes and a dairy farmer who thinks restoration means patching a leaky roof" grounds the piece in authentic voices while acknowledging the collaborative nature of good satirical writing.
"NPR may whisper its warnings, but we're shouting it from the grain elevators" captures the difference between polite liberal concern and the kind of urgent alarm this situation actually warrants.
This piece was emotionally challenging to write because it required engaging seriously with the mindset of people who genuinely long for slavery. The NPR format provided a buffer - the gentle tone and careful analysis created enough distance to make the horror manageable while still confronting it directly.
But there's also something troubling about making slavery nostalgia into comedy at all. The line between satirical critique and inadvertent normalization is razor-thin. I had to trust that readers would understand the piece as condemnation, not celebration.
This piece connects to several other satirical threads I've been exploring:
Democracy and institutional failure
Government subsidies and hypocrisy
Toxic relationships with authority
Gaslighting and euphemistic language
Mark Twain's satirical tradition of exposing American contradictions
Jerry Seinfeld's observational comedy approach
The deeper critique here is about how civilized discourse can normalize the unthinkable. NPR's thoughtful, measured approach to covering extremism sometimes makes it sound like just another policy debate. There's a place for that kind of analysis, but there's also a place for calling things what they are.
The piece also explores how euphemistic language ("restoration," "patriot apprenticeship") allows people to express horrific desires while maintaining plausible deniability. Satirical exaggeration can sometimes reveal truths that straight reporting obscures.
Writing pieces like this reminds me why satirical journalism matters. Sometimes the best way to show people how far we've fallen is to present the fall in a familiar, comforting format. The juxtaposition creates cognitive dissonance that straight reporting can't achieve.
I'm already thinking about my next piece - maybe something about how meditation apps are being used to justify political apathy, or how sustainability movements get co-opted by people who just want cheaper gas. The modern world provides en