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Here’s a pretty good parody of the Doobie Brothers’ “Black Water” by Steve Goodie. The topic? Take a guess.

By the way, I looked at several “Downfall” parodies related to the BP oil spill in the Gulf, but none of them seemed quite up to snuff.

As well-crafted as Steve’s parody song is, it makes me think of an issue that comedy writers discuss occasionally, especially those of us who’ve been fortunate enough to get our material blasted out far and wide via SNL, The Daily Show, etc. There is a point at which the tools of mass-market satire become inappropriate, not because certain things shouldn’t be satirized, but because to make the satire palatable and fit the form, the object/event/situation being commented on has to be reduced to “satirizable” size. So instead of highlighting the wrong that should be made right, a satire can seem to reduce the wrong, domesticate it, draw its fangs. “There’s a huge oil spill in the Gulf…and also, Justin Bieber is annoying.” My friend Sean Kelly calls it the “now, this” effect. In a series of jokes, the gravitas seeks the lowest level.

Parody is particularly susceptible to this, because it relies so heavily on the characteristics of an original. To use an example from my own life: I could’ve used the Harry Potter series to comment on Homo sapiens’ taste for genocide, with the wizards as the hunted and the Muggles as the perpetrators. But of course I did not; the proportions are so obviously wrong that it wouldn’t have been readable, much less enjoyable.

At what point these proportion problems kick in with an individual issue or joke is difficult to say, but I think it explains to some degree what’s happened to American comedy in my lifetime. In the last forty years, comedy has become more and more satirical, reflecting our lust for timeliness. This glut has generally weakened satire as a method of emotional release, and increased its well-known ineffectiveness as a way to change minds. Today, nothing’s sacred, but nothing’s serious, either. And without a certain seriousness, a world of satire engenders feelings of powerlessness and nihilism. What’s the motto of The Onion? “You are stupid.”

If you’ve got powerlessness and nihilism on the one side, and the profit motive on the other, guess which side carries the day? The situation in the Gulf isn’t just about BP and Transocean’s lust for profit; it’s also about a population lacking the will to shift to cleaner energy. Has satire restrained the profit motive? Certainly not—satire only works if shame is a possibility, and corporations don’t have feelings. Has satire increased feelings of “what can you do?” in those of us who can feel shame? Yes, I think it has. Is it in the interest of corporate culture that we have comedy that makes us feel powerless? Sure.

I’m not arguing against satire; but I think it’s abundantly clear that corporate sources of it have figured out ways to render it harmless. The good news is, there’s an internet. And if the people who make the jokes move away from that feeling of nihilism, better things will be encouraged. We’ve known for decades the problems with oil; the question is, how much will we put up with until we figure out something better? Comedy—and certainly satire—should always be on the side of creating something better, not just allowing you to endure what we’ve got.