C-J, Ford, satire, and senses of humor

A great letter in yesterday's C-J is probably the last round in a weird but interesting saga...

Poor David Hawpe. He still doesn't get it. His very diplomatic but feeble attempt to defend The Courier's printing of a classical satire by the Corydon writer completely missed the real irony of the dialogue. I saw the humor of that classical satire as pointing out the adulation of the Obama fans without diminishing the character of President-elect Obama. However, the spate of dissenting letter writers attempted to trample both free speech and freedom of the press by howling for The Courier to censor letters which differ from their point of view.

That, I think, is not only far more offensive but actually dangerous. The Courier has consistently published letters and political cartoons that I felt were derogatory and trashed conservative values, but I realized that was the prerogative of freedom of speech and freedom of the press.

You go, Courier; keep publishing those anti-free speech letters to let their writers expose themselves for the humorless partisans that I believe they are...

This follows Hawpe's explanation for why they ran the letter (and a broader discussion of their editorial policies with respect to "letters to the editor") and a spate of angry letters over a few days responding to their literal interpretation of the original letter by Jim Burnside:

I have a simple solution to one of the major problems of the automakers. Since the companies must pay an average of $73 per hour per worker, including health care and pension benefits, those costs could be slashed drastically by replacing the workers with chimpanzees. They could do the jobs just as well for a cost of about six bananas per day per chimp.

After all, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to install a couple of bolts or clean a windshield on a new vehicle. Another benefit of this process would be the creation of many new jobs in the banana-raising business because of the increased demand for bananas. In addition, the chimp-raising business would also require more employees, and those jobs could be filled by retrained former auto workers.

It's funny that Hawpe in his letter still isn't convinced that this is satire!