Heather Mallick..... Self Satirist Extrodonairre

I'm sure many of you've seen the Billy Crystal/Robert De Nero movie Analyse This. You know the one where Crystal plays the unwilling shrink to De Nero's psychopathic mob boss. In the movie De Nero is brilliant as he satirizes every mob character he ever played, he hams it up as an insecure killer who becomes reliant on Crystal to deal with his anxieties and maintain his grip on his underworld empire. In the cinematic world De Nero's performance was a tour de force of self satire. I loved it.

I think I may have found the journalistic equivalent of De Nero's self satire in a recent piece by our very own Heather Mallick.

You may recall that Heather gained international notoriety for a hate filled screed directed at Sarah Palin, her family and republicans in general entitled A Mighty Wind Blows Through Republican Convention. Right wing bloggers reacted with disdain and soon the MSM in the US were on her case. Fox News took up the cause with the corresponding backlash causing the CBC to eventually issue an apology and Heather to decry the viscousness of the reaction to her musings. Rumor has it Heather was called on the carpet and told to reform her ways. Hence the new, self satirical Heather Mallick.

To illustrate how far Heather has come on her artistic journey to the confidence required for self satire I thought a little compare and contrast might be in order. Heather's most recent piece is entitled "Obamaland vs. McCainworld: The Decision".

For the purposes of clarity I'll refer to Heather's journalistic bit as "A Wind Blows" and her satire bit as "Obamaland".

In no particular order here are some of the funnier bits: Oh!!!!...Try to read Heather's italicized nuggets with an affected English accent.....it's much more authentic that way.


A Wind Blows:

Palin has a toned-down version of the porn actress look favoured by this decade's woman, the overtreated hair, puffy lips and permanently alarmed expression.

Obamaland:

Primed as I am to find marriage intrinsically funny, I still didn't find the charade of the McCain marriage amusing at all. Cindy McCain was a pretty, happy young woman when she made the decision to marry a starchy rage-filled man making up for lost time; she seems to have had a subsequent hellish life that money has done nothing to improve.

She was a thin, peeled white nerve placed precariously behind her stubby husband. I don't know what helped her survive the campaign but I hope her doctors were compassionate with prescriptions.

A Wind Blows:

Bristol has what is known in Britain as the look of the teen mum, the "pramface." Husband Todd looks like a roughneck; Track, heading off to Iraq, appears terrified. They claim to be family obsessed while being studiously terrible at parenting. What normal father would want Levi "I'm a fuckin' redneck" Johnson prodding his daughter?

Obamaland:

The campaign was marked by the presence of the young.

College students were mad for Obama. And even babies liked him; they respond to calmness and quiet assurance in adults and they sat placidly in his arms.

It was good to see a candidate who has young children. For that's when an adult is most impatient for improvement in the world, when it's a fixer-upper he might eventually be able to show off to his kids.

A Wind Blows:

I assume John McCain chose Sarah Palin as his vice-presidential partner in a fit of pique because the Republican money men refused to let him have the stuffed male shirt he really wanted. She added nothing to the ticket that the Republicans didn't already have sewn up, the white trash vote, the demographic that sullies America's name inside and outside its borders yet has such a curious appeal for the right.

Obamaland:

The word that stayed in my mind as the campaign dragged on through the collapse of the world's economic structure was "hobo." We're all going to be hobos.

I would imagine myself packing up my bindle and setting out on the road in overalls and a pair of Roots boots. Train whistles, boxcars, hot soup, sleeping under a bridge, misery, fear, scrawny children with bite marks on their faces. A heartless Annie Leibovitz would be our Dorothea Lange.

It didn't matter how secure or insecure we really were during the fall of '08; we watched McCain and Obama fight it out and figured we'd all be Tom Joads pretty soon.

If McCain wins, sooner than that, I bet, and there'll be riots too.

A Wind Blows:

Palin has it all, along with being vicious and profoundly dishonest.

Obamaland:

But I'm glad it's over. It has been a degrading, unedifying spectacle. Besides, voting day means Obama won't again be speaking to tens of thousands of people in Minneapolis or Denver . He'll be home, safer from the one bullet that has so often served to bring an already violent nation to its knees.

It has taken Americans decades to drag themselves back up to a standing position since Robert F. Kennedy Jr. died and there are no words for how heartbreaking it would be if the bullet were used again.

This is how beaten down we have become, that we're grateful when a politician physically survives the campaign. And I'll be grateful not to have to watch John McCain make a fool of himself anymore.

That's classic satirical shit there Heather......I'm impressed and in awe.

Syncro