As I’ve been asking: is satire really ‘dead’ or has it always been just masturbatory and even counterproductive?

Ed Driscoll:

We all had fun at first, when Kim Jong Il’s permanent vacation in Hell was announced on Sunday night, linking to images from Team America: World Police, and videos that highlighted just how silly North Korea’s old-fashioned totalitarian regime looks. (…)

Certainly Kim Jong Il and his apparatchiks deserve our scorn — and will be lucky to get even that from our current feckless administration. But how much does our mockery and satire add to the west’s indifference to North Korea’s plight?

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We’re assured by the likes of Mel Brooks, Charlie Chaplin and other humorists that they’re doing the world a great favor by mocking this or that tyrant, that bullies can bear anything but ridicule.

But what concrete proof do we have of satire’s effectiveness? Seems pretty hit and miss, and mostly self-congratulatory.