The satirical verses

POLITICAL jokes travel farther than ever before. Last year the Onion, a satirical magazine in America, declared Kim Jong Un, North Korea’s round-faced leader, the “sexiest man alive”. The People’s Daily newspaper in China took the nomination seriously and ran a 55-photo spread to celebrate the honour. When the Onion published a fake poll announcing that rural white Americans had a more favourable opinion of Iran’s then-president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, than of Barack Obama, an Iranian state news-agency covered this as real news. Lots of people are less ingenuously looking at the Onion to entertain themselves. In the past year its web traffic has grown by around 70%.

Political satire used to be the preserve of artists and writers like Honoré Daumier, who caricatured King Louis Philippe in 19th-century France, and George Orwell, the author of “Animal Farm”. It has existed at least since Aristophanes took aim at the Greek elite in his plays, but thanks to modern technology and a changing political climate it is almost everywhere today. The internet has made it easier for the masses to join in the fun. Cartoons and lampoons can be posted online, no longer needing a print publication to host them. Social media have helped political sideswipes to spread as contagiously as laughter, and have fostered a “remix culture” in which internet-users share memes and post spoofs with abandon.