Isn’t it ironic that people who don’t understand irony often labour under the delusion that ironists are merely victims prone to gratuitous exhibitions of childish ignorance?

Do you know anyone who has trouble comprehending irony? I think most people I know do.

It gets tedious to constantly hear myself ‘corrected’ – by otherwise reasonable people – whenever I’ve absurdly illustrated some point that obviously contradicts my oft-affirmed values; or worse, being ‘schooled’ when I’m obviously feigning ignorance for comic effect. (I have to wonder what goes on in the heads who don’t get it. Do they think the sarcastic tone is just a cover for ignorance or something? I have no idea.) Too often I often find myself murmuring “yeah, that’s the point I was trying to make…” into my palm. Don’t get me started on my habitual misadventures in Socratic irony.

What’s even more irritating is trying to explain to outraged (or otherwise affected) people that there’s irony afoot, and they have missed it. Once the message is communicated, then, like clockwork, I will then have to endure an exasperated “WHY IS THAT FUNNY?!” (I don’t know? Why do some people laugh at some jokes, but not others?) And if I’m lucky, “THAT’S SO OFFENSIVE!” (I’ll get to that.)

I do ‘deadpan’ as well, but that doesn’t get me in as much trouble, beyond some very confused girlfriends when it shows up at family dinners. I’d retire the irony if I could, but it’s automatic. I can’t help it. Funny or not, ironic humour is so integrated into my personality that removing it would probably require radical brain surgery and aggressive gene therapy.

I’m naturally well-versed in sarcasm. I see sarcasm as irony’s most obvious delivery system. I think of sarcasm as the dialogue, and irony as the script, speaker, the costumes, the stage and the audience. It is possible (often preferable) to be verbally ironic without using sarcasm, but we’ll take baby steps here.

Because irony-blindness is so widespread among my milieu, the subject hasn’t ever been totally absent from my mind. A perusal of various op-eds on irony (mostly revolving around Ricky Gervais’ sardonic brand) have lead me to believe that irony-blindness may very well be a distinctly American import. (Hint.)

One needs only to spend a few minutes on Fox News or MSNBC websites to get a feel for how blind much of the American electorate is to irony. The culture that spawns the archetypal hipster who describes every facet of his interactions with others as ‘ironic’ in a Los Angeles accent is – ahem – telling.

Beyond my own numbing quotidian interpersonal exposures to irony blindness, it became painfully clear to me that I was noticing a wider issue when an exceptionally simple-minded retelling of The Chaser‘s “Make a Realistic Wish Foundation” stunt dominated the news for a few weeks. Almost everybody was hysterically pissed off. It was like Michael Richards dropped the n-bomb all over again (which, by the way, wasn’t ironic of him – it was a stupid unfunny attempt at shock humour).

This being Australia, the then-Prime Minister even missed the point of the exercise, and he wasn’t shy about sharing. The segment in question wasn’t even funny by the Chaser’s low standards. The point they made wasn’t unique, either. It was reasonably nuanced (I won’t say ‘sophisticated’) and it did present a relevant commentary of Australian consumerist culture, but otherwise it wasn’t worthy of further comment. This being Australia, though, the Chaser boys went on to ruin an important lesson for the Australian public and discredit themselves in one fell swoop by issuing an apology.

I’d argue that the stunt itself wasn’t especially ironic, the (dramatic) irony manifested itself in the length and intensity of the media’s mindless responses to what was plainly satire. Some people I knew did actually get the point of the stunt, and thought the media coverage was as absurd as I did. But then, I’ve observed those same people frequently finding themselves baited into pointless battles from every direction.

I’ve wised up and I know not to mention certain things around those people, because I know I’ll inadvertently offend their sensibilities. As I said, they’re good, smart people – just not in on irony.

(An aside: Political talking heads blind to irony are a priori blind to the irony of ‘political correctness’. That is, they don’t realize that by tiptoeing around some minority’s designated sore spots, they are communicating a total lack of awareness  of how incredibly condescending they are being. This works both ways – the liberals who hold it as sacrosanct are just as ridiculous as the conservatives who complain of it being prone to madness. If I may: ‘political correctness’ an intellectually bankrupt concept. Far better to treat all people the same to begin with and then as individuals on their own terms – not least because some of individuals are indeed prone to irony, and we know the PC crowd might miss that.)

Irony isn’t the secret handshake of some elite club, it’s just a style of humour; a subtle one I assume certain people immersed in certain cultures miss when they haven’t been exposed to it very frequently or in a wide enough range of contexts.

I say ‘contexts’ because I have some friends who have gotten used to my habitual, almost unconscious use of irony as a rhetorical device, but will totally miss it when someone else indulges. The same can be said for American Liberal reactionaries who find themselves offended by virtually all satire that isn’t delivered by Stephen Colbert. (See above.)

So what makes me, a self-described consummate ironist (cough), separate from a hefty chunk of my compatriots? Briefly: I was raised by a Brit with a British sense of humour, and with a deadpan British extended family with a working class background. The need to make light of pretty much everything was reinforced into my cortex from as soon as I could point at the moon and say “curtains!”, then giggle. British humour is typically on the dark side and irony-laden (genetic, apparently). Here’s an outline of what underlies generic British humour (courtesy of Theo Tebbe paper The funny side of the United Kingdom):

[T]he British sense of black humour seems to be even darker. It generally juxtaposes cruel and or awful elements with comical ones that underscore the senselessness or futility of life. The Britons often use low comedy to make clear that individuals are helpless victims of fate and character. Using black humour and irony is a good way to escape serious social forces … [t]herefore irony became popular in Britain since the 18th century and was used to decentre their life and thus to start an inner distancing process.

See also:

Thank God that Ricky Gervais is an atheist. I mentioned him before – he’s very, very popular in Britain. Jeremy Clarkson is quite popular too. Clarkson is currently in hot water among middle class leftists for making an unfunny joke about strikers that from Stephen Colbert wouldn’t have raised an eyebrow.

To those cursed with purely literal minds, Clarkson is a noisy simpleton (he describes himself as ‘big and bombastic’) worth more scorn than critical thought. But to the majority of Brits, he’s either funny or he’s not, but in either case, it’s painfully obvious that he’s not serious. Was he being insensitive? Not really. The strikers have more to worry about than what a professional adolescent says on a television show about toys.

How far are the pushers of any cause going to get if they’re twitchy about what an entertainer says? What disarms a verbal sparring partner more than genuine indifference? My dictionary assures me that ‘iron’ and ‘irony’ have distinct roots (‘irony’ from Greek and Latin, ‘iron’ from Middle English), but I think there is something to be said for their similarity.

The ironist’s attitude to life would be self-defeating if the ironist can dish out but can’t take in turn. Well, we can take it. We positively eat it up. A deep desire for an acutely aware, relaxed world populated by self-secure people is probably the subconscious source of the ironist’s sense of humour. I immediately recognize someone capable of apology when they think they have managed to offend me as someone I need to tread lightly around.

A joke that communicates something incongruent with the speaker’s attitudes is simply not offensive. Actions are offensive, and indeed certain asocial attitudes can be offensive, but words are not. I’ve heard before the worry expressed that a comment like Jeremy’s might galvanize the hatred of some genuinely offensive specimens. But so what? Is that really worth the costs of free expression and the erection of some new cultural idol for worship? Does Jeremy Clarkson‘s caricature of hate really empower the hateful, or does it simply draw a certain kind of attention to them?

I don’t expect this entry to make much of a difference in my personal life. I’m certainly not looking for sympathy. It would be fun, though, to live in a world full of people cognizant of speakers rather than mere words. I’d also argue that nobody unmasks hatred as brazenly or efficiently as the professional ironist. If you’re old enough to remember LSD, recall Bill Hicks’ ‘lesbians are cool, gays are vile’ routine. Ultimately, I think an awareness of irony forces us to recognize that people do more than just excrete packages of verbs and nouns for the insensate and unimaginative to pick at.

It’s just more fun when everyone gets ‘it’.

Anyway, I’m supposed to be working on a book about science and philosophy. No, that’s not –

EDIT: This.