Reality 1, Satire 0

 Some days I don't know whether to pity satirists or roll my eyes at how easy they have it. This is because more and more in America reality has become so absurd it is its own satire, leaving satirists with either nowhere to go or an absolute gimme.

For instance, I saw this the other day on the satirical website The Onion. It's supposed to skewer the boneheads in Oklahoma who've decided how schools are allowed to teach about the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre. It seems the chief bonehead, state superintendent of schools Ryan Walters, has decreed it's OK for teachers to talk about the Tulsa Race Massacre, but only if they emphasize it wasn't about race.

I'm serious. He actually said that.

Which means he teed it up very nicely for publications like The Onion, and at the same time made it impossible for them to satire. It's hard to make something look completely ridiculous, after all, when the real thing is already completely ridiculous.

And it is, of course.

A brief synopsis of what happened in Tulsa in 1921, just for background: The arrest of a young black man on a highly dubious charge of assaulting a white woman in an elevator mushroomed into an armed assault by a mob of angry (jealous?) whites on Greenwood,  the black section of Tulsa which had become so prosperous it was called the Black Wall Street.

In a day-long pitched battle, the mob burned 35 blocks of Greenwood, torching 1,256 homes, plus churches, grocery stores, hospitals, pool halls, Masonic lodges, drugstores, doctors offices and a variety of other businesses. They even bombed the district from the air.

Black residents fought back, but largely to no avail. By the time the assault ended, some 300 blacks were dead -- some estimates put the figure much higher --  and Black Wall Street was gone.

But, nah. It wasn't about race. And The Onion's satire might not actually be satire. 

Those hilarious made-up "quotes", for instance?

It's not hard to imagine Oklahoma kids actually saying them once Ryan Walters gets done warping history for them.

After all, you teach a kid fairy tales, that's what he knows. Name of that tune.