Some time back, there was a version of the Fry from Futurama “Not sure if…” meme that had him trying to decide if a headline was from an Onion article or real-life. That’s because the best satire tweaks reality just enough to make it ludicrous.
The problem is that we live in a ludicrous Clown World already. Reality is too ridiculous to be satirised. As the meme hints, any given story from the Onion is indistinguishable from actual news.
The Babylon Bee is another satirical news site, whose stories often just restate reality in such unambiguous terms that simply highlights the Clown World we are living in.
For Pride Month, hundreds of corporations are being applauded for bravely coming out in support of an incredibly popular, socially acceptable, entirely mainstream movement: the LGBTQ+ community.
It obviously takes a lot of courage for a big corporation to fly a rainbow-colored flag, sell rainbow merchandise, or temporarily change their logo to pride colors. So these massive companies are really going out on a limb here, supporting a movement that you’re literally ostracized for not supporting.]
The time when supporting gay rights was a controversial stand ended roughly when leg warmers and shoulder pads began to go out of fashion. In fact, it’s more dangerous to say that you support constitutionally-guaranteed rights like freedom of speech than it is to plaster idiotic rainbows over everything.
[“I’m so glad to see that YouTube is using a rainbow-colored button on some of its social media accounts,” one gay man in San Francisco said. “It shows how courageous they are, to come out and openly accept this community that is 100% accepted by all of secular society.”
“I am much more confident in my gayness when I see that these huge corporations are willing to exploit their support of gays for profit.”]
And that’s the name of the game: exploitation. These corporations aren’t being “brave”, they’re being cynically exploitative. Rainbow iconography is mostly for straight people desperate to signal their “progressive” virtue.
Because, here’s the thing: even a lot of gay people are chary of the whole “rainbow” bs, and despise the very notion of “lgbtqi-whatever community”. As one friend said to me, “I’d rather kill myself than go to a stupid ‘Pride’ parade”.
Meanwhile, companies that openly support incredibly unpopular religious causes were booed for their cowardice.
babylonbee
As the Israel Folau scandal shows, there’s far more risk in being an openly devout Christian today than in being a ‘flaming queer’.