Pity poor irony. Irony used to be a rebellious stance, a way of looking at an orderly world through a cracked mirror, a way of busting balloons filled with pompous hot air. But what does one do when irony becomes the norm? When there is no orderly world to mock? When everyone wants to be Groucho and no one is willing to play Margaret Dumont? You end up with a world in which everyone wants to be the hippest one in the room, in which comedy becomes so superior and distant it seldom stoops to being funny. A world in which irreverence itself becomes meaningless, because nothing is revered. A world like the one we’re in now.
A quote from Phoef Sutton in The Big Book of Irony.
