On "Poe's Law"
I had the hardest time remembering what "Poe's Law" was supposed to mean - and why examples thereof are called "poes".
Not that I disagreed with it: it's nearly too true to argue against ("Landover Baptist Church" being a great example). What I couldn't figure out was, why is it *Poe's* Law?
Granted, I've not read much Poe in the last few decades, but the closest I could come to a referent was "The Purloined Letter", and that was so far off-base, I stopped assuming a connection to The Great Fabulist.
Then, today, an idea struck me: the famous scene from "Dr. Strangelove", where General Jack Ripper gives voice to a bizarre reflection on "...the purity of our natural bodily fluids". (The initials POE figure heavily into the climax, so if you haven't seen it, shame on you & get thee to Netflix!)
POE: a code for (and from) a pseudo-Bircher parody rant in one of the blackest satires in film history. A rant so on-target that it's hard to distinguish it from a real Bircher rant of the same period.
And so, have I uncovered the original, the 'ur-poe' that defines all others?
Not that I disagreed with it: it's nearly too true to argue against ("Landover Baptist Church" being a great example). What I couldn't figure out was, why is it *Poe's* Law?
Granted, I've not read much Poe in the last few decades, but the closest I could come to a referent was "The Purloined Letter", and that was so far off-base, I stopped assuming a connection to The Great Fabulist.
Then, today, an idea struck me: the famous scene from "Dr. Strangelove", where General Jack Ripper gives voice to a bizarre reflection on "...the purity of our natural bodily fluids". (The initials POE figure heavily into the climax, so if you haven't seen it, shame on you & get thee to Netflix!)
POE: a code for (and from) a pseudo-Bircher parody rant in one of the blackest satires in film history. A rant so on-target that it's hard to distinguish it from a real Bircher rant of the same period.
And so, have I uncovered the original, the 'ur-poe' that defines all others?