Steve Braunias: The Secret Diary of 2022

This year, satire wasn't from harmless bystanders but from officials close to Putin, the most pathetic and deranged ruler in the world. Photo / AP

Something new happened in satire in 2022. I was very struck by it when it appeared in the paper in February. It was a story in the world pages. I tore it out – there were articles on the back about Covid restrictions in New South Wales, and the discovery that thousands of baptisms performed by a Catholic priest in Phoenix have been ruled invalid - and put it in my top drawer. It had a black kind of magic to it when it was published and it took on an even darker, far more ominous shade as the year progressed.

We think of satire as an attack on the powerful, a blade or a boot swung upwards, directed by harmless bystanders (Hello, I’m Steve and I’m a satirist). We think of the great Dunedin-born cartoonist David Low, put on Hitler’s death list for his drawings of the Nazi fuhrer as pathetic and deranged. We think of Alec Baldwin’s impersonations of Trump as pathetic and deranged. We accept that nothing is changed as a result of satirising political leaders, but love its tradition, its ancient practice, its instinct to have a bit of fun, malicious or affectionate, with those who rule our world.

But the news story I clipped out of the paper on February 16 was satire from the other direction. It was satire from the top. It was satire from people who are neither harmless nor bystanding, and were in fact standing very close to the centre of the action, where decisions are made that affect lives, that have the power to end lives. It was satire from officials close to someone who is the most pathetic and deranged ruler in the world in 2022: Putin.

The story was headlined, “Sarcasm is Kremlin’s weapon.” The story, which came through the AP agency, was published on the brink of the war on Ukraine. It quoted Russian Foreign Affairs spokesperson Maria Zakharova, and Russia’s ambassador to the European Union, Vladimir Chizhov. Good to see the binary genders evenly represented. Both were united in their scorn at the very idea Russia would do anything as insane as actually invade Ukraine. No way, they said, laughing.

Maria asked the “mass media of disinformation” in the West “to reveal the schedule of our ‘invasions’. I’d like to plan my vacations.”

Lol.

Vladimir accused the Western media of “slander” for alleging an invasion was afoot. The story was published on a Monday. There were fears that Russia would invade that Wednesday. “Wars in Europe,” he said, “rarely start on a Wednesday.”

Funny.

But the punchline was even better. The invasion began that Thursday.

Where to begin with all of this? What funny bone, exactly, does it touch? Satire, on the eve of destruction; satire, minutes away from launching the sea-launched Kalibr cruise missiles and the ground-launched Iskander missiles. BBC report, November: “The most senior US general estimates that around 100,000 Russian and 100,000 Ukrainian soldiers have been killed or injured.” Gee. So how did Maria get on with planning her vacations?

Vladimir also said that same week, “There will be no escalation in the coming week either, or in the week after that, or in the coming months.” We all get things wrong. Few of us get things as monstrously wrong as that.

I spent rather too much time in 2022 worrying about the role and responsibilities of satire. You would too, probably, if you wrote a dispatch every Saturday that operated under the principle of making fun of the wretch of the week. The dear old Secret Diary, making fun of the wretch of the week since 2009, exists to try and entertain. It doesn’t really go any deeper than that but still, I worry about it being too mean and I worry about it being too nice. I worry about it being too woke and I worry about it being too conservative. But I live in New Zealand and don’t have to worry about it being an instrument of a military state governed by a pathetic and deranged killer, and I don’t have to worry about its relationship with 200,000 soldiers killed or injured.

No, wait. That description – a deep state, a despot, the slaughter of the innocent – is something quite a lot of people think is true of life in New Zealand. The anti-vax community and its various assorted cohorts of the aggrieved share a profound dislike of Jacinda Ardern. It was felt during the occupation of Parliament grounds in summer; it was there, too, in August, when protesters staged a mock war crimes trial in Civic Square, Wellington. They charged Jacinda Ardern with crimes against humanity. They wore jumpers that read “freedom”. Some guy dressed up as a judge. Once again in 2022, satire took on new forms, different shapes.

Around the time of the Civic Square protest is when I just happened to be reading the complete 42-volume set of the Nuremberg trials of Nazi war criminals. Yeah. Light reading. The seriousness and horror of it – the volumes are a record of the Holocaust - kind of made me feel really not in the slightest bit well disposed towards the Civic Square protesters and their lame satire. Like Maria and Vladimir, those smirking employees of the Kremlin, it just wasn’t funny.

Politics in New Zealand is the legislation which makes our lives easier or makes our lives more difficult. The dear old Secret Dairy operates within that paradigm. There’s a lot at stake but at least it’s not at the end of a gun. It makes it possible to write the Secret Diary with a light heart and to sometimes create it in the form of cowboy stories starring Governor Ardern, Big Bad Baldy Luxon, and Whitey Collins in her rocking chair in an attic above the saloon. Satire, as entertainment; satire, by a harmless bystander.