Nobody likes a wisenheimer Humor You've got to ask yourself whether, after fifty years of mass media, the teeming world today has begun to lose its satirical perspective. Take the Internet, which appeared at first glance to provide a democratic opportunity to make fun of all the pasty-faced sugardaddies of the mass media: the Cronkites and Sawyers, Jenners and Gumbels; the over-fed, over-mascaraed grandstanders of the boob tube. Here at last, was a chance for lightness and perspective. But, no, the Net only bred its own tribe of toadies: Dyson and Negroponte, among others. And the smug middle-class everymen and everywomen gathered around in humble silence and bemused appreciation. Even chatrooms gained their proselytizers of good taste and plain-as-porridge views, respecting everything and everyone, but questioning and understanding nothing. In short, the Net is a failure as a satirical medium. Where are the Kurt Vonneguts,Tom Woolfes, and Paddy Chayefskys of the Web? Where's that good-old American irreverence that gurgles in your gut like a hungry stomach? Who ordered the online baby food? Understandably, satirists are prone to be misunderstood. Voltaire, for example, fled to his castle near Switzerland toward the end of his life to be safe from the institutional hammer. Vonnegut sold cars before rising to the pantheon of greats. William Saroyan -- one of my favorite authors -- holed himself up in the suburbs, unrecognized and unapplauded, until a week before his death, when he called up a radio station to publicize his impending fate. Now, those guys had a sense of humor. Today, when everyone and his mother-in-law has the means to create a personal Web page, they seem to flow instead to the pasteurized, homogenized likes of MSN and CNN, the usual brand of pap. Even intellectuals water down their original thinking so it looks, smells, and tastes like eyewash -- the beverage of choice of the pasteurized, homogenized, I'm-just-like-you -and- you're-just-like-me, ain't-I masses. Since when has quality in thinking been a group grope? On the Web, the novel-minded wanted to create a stir before the hordes of plain-as-everyday folk drove up the ramp. They had funny names like the Well, Freedom Frontier, and Wired, until the corporations bribed or bought them out. (Just kidding, please don't sue.) You've got to wonder whether the pattern of the radio killing the newspapers, and television killing the magazines and movies, will not be followed by MSN killing off the last ounce of originality this culture can hope to preserve. Yep, its impetus toward satire. September 20, 2000