'Satire has had a busy year': how to laugh at the year that was | Life and style | The Guardian

"Barely a year goes by these days without some kind of major news event occurring. Time was, not so long ago in the grand scheme of things, when nothing much would happen for a couple of centuries. Some historians (OK, Wikipedia) note that in the year 1317, there were only four events. It must have been a testing time to be a newsreader or topical panel show comedian; but was the planet happier, unencumbered by things that were happening, and people’s reactions to things that were happening, preoccupied as they were by humble pursuits such as avoiding death? Who knows.

Now, however, news never sleeps (which might explain why it has become so short-tempered and erratic). As the first year in history in which the most powerful person in the world has been an internet troll with access to a Twitter account, 2017 has been even more newsically unrelenting than its predecessor, role model and inspiration, 2016.

It has been a year of nuclear brinksmanship with a North Korean loon-child, of celebrity sexpestilence being belatedly confronted, of accusations, denials, counter-denials and conspiracy theories, of tension, anger, bafflement and confusion at a planet being tugged simultaneously forwards into an uncontrollable future and backwards towards a largely fictitious past. The medieval and the futuristic have proved uncomfortable bedfellows."

read article by Andy Zaltzman

'Satire has had a busy year': how to laugh at the year that was | Life and style | The Guardian: