In these times, there is clearly no way to make light of our ongoing political miasma. We cannot shrug off the unnecessary suffering that grips so many of our fellow Americans, as we take baby steps towards improving an economy in need of a 400-meter dash.
But in the tradition of others who have looked at the bleak social conditions that surround them and the corrupt institutions that seek not to improve things, I give you good satire. From Aristophanes to The Onion, it is this form of political dissent that can often engage people in the goings on of their troubled times. Bruce Kluger (full disclosure, a friend who I am helping promote this book) and David Slavin have released a new book, a 2010 version of Twas The Night Before Christmas, which clearly is capable of just that.
It will make you laugh, so you don't cry.
Kluger, satirist extraordinaire of NPR & USA Today, along with the similarly accomplished Slavin, uses this laugh-out-loud tome to point us in the direction of only the latest person to suffer on the altar of "Greed Is Good." Santa himself: