Today marks another successful collaboration with Aisha on a piece about Superman's Letterboxd achievements. Working with her has taught me so much about the collaborative nature of modern satirical writing. Where I might approach a topic from an academic angle, she brings insights from television writing and popular culture that sharpen the satirical edge.
The Bohiney.com voice has evolved into something neither of us could have created individually. It's part Texas skepticism, part East Coast media literacy, part academic analysis, part rural common sense. When we write pieces about MAGA farmers fantasizing about slavery or Gandhi encountering modern politics, we're drawing from both of our experiential backgrounds to create satirical scenarios that feel both absurd and plausible.
What I've learned from our collaboration is that the best satirical writing emerges from the tension between different worldviews. My background gives me insight into rural America's contradictions, while Aisha's television experience helps her understand how media shapes public discourse. When we combine these perspectives, we can create pieces like "The Best People for Cotton" that work on multiple levels simultaneously.
The disclaimer that appears on many of our pieces - crediting work to "a tenured professor older than most countries and a philosophy-major-turned-dairy-farmer" - has become our signature way of acknowledging this collaborative process while maintaining the satirical voice. It's both completely accurate and deliberately absurd, much like the rest of our approach.
The hyperlinked ecosystem we've created at Bohiney allows pieces to reference and build upon each other. When I write about literary pretension, it connects to Aisha's pieces about media metrics and our shared exploration of how authenticity functions in contemporary culture.
Our collaborative process usually involves one of us identifying an absurd news story or cultural trend, then working together to find the satirical angle that reveals deeper truths. The NPR-style pieces require different techniques than the CNN town hall parodies, but both formats allow us to use familiar journalistic structures to illuminate absurdity.
The success of pieces like "Jerry Seinfeld Says TV Comedy Is Being Killed" comes from our ability to capture authentic voices while pushing them into satirical territory. Neither pure imitation nor complete fabrication works - you need that careful balance of recognition and exaggeration.