Satire - the funny kind (who knew?)

After relentlessly researching for an adequate piece of satire on the Internet (typing in "satire," "funny satire piece," "political satire," etc. into various search engines), I stumbled upon theonion.com. After reading a few articles and watching a few videos I was thoroughly confused... either the editors of this newspaper were publishing their articles from an asylum or they were on some sort of hallucinogen. Then I realized... it was all fake, or in AP Lang speak, a site solely dedicated to satirizing modern society. I ended up settling on the article Alarming Study Finds More Than 12 Instances Of Racism Occurred Last Year, which had me laughing from the title. The tone of the article was sarcastic and lightly mocking from start to finish -- and was jam-packed with rhetorical devices. Hyperboles were scattered everywhere (from "I can understand one, possibly two racially charged comments uttered in the heat of the moment, and then quickly recounted and apologized for; people make mistakes, after all. But more than a dozen? That's inconceivable," to "In the only high profile event of its kind, an intoxicated man at a Plano, TX bar openly declared that President Obama, who is of African descent, should "go back to Kenya where he belongs," spurring a swift investigation by the Secret Service.") and irony was evident in virtually every sentence ("researchers had been operating under the com­monly held assumption that bigotry on such a massive scale was a distant relic of the past"). The devices were not only effective, but they were just plain funny ("Describing the data as 'extremely worrisome,' the research team detailed a staggering five occasions on which white people walked faster after noticing a black teenager walking behind them..." - come on, that is hilarious). I was seriously laughing out loud at a few points -- not because I think making fun of African Americans is funny, but because this article shows just how ridiculous and racist our society has become.  The Ku Klux Klan may not be running rampant, but stereotypical comments are conjured up in our minds as soon as we see a black dude with saggy pants or an Asian scampering around with five textbooks. No matter what we say, we all know deep down that prejudice still plays a large role in our society... and in our own minds as well. This article, while being laugh-out-loud funny, made its readers reevaluate their perspective and consider thinking about what they say before they say it. Cause let's face it, we probably see 12 racist comments about Obama on Facebook without having to even look for them.