[originaltext] (30) Perhaps the most striking quality of satiric literatur

(30) Perhaps the most striking quality of satiric literature is its freshness, its originality of perspective. Satire rarely offers original ideas. Instead it presents the familiar in a new form. Satirists do not offer the world new philosophies.  What they do is to look at familiar conditions from a perspective that makes these conditions seem foolish, harmful or affected. (31) It was not the originality of the idea that made satires popular. It was the manner of expression in satiric works that made them interesting and entertaining. Satires are read because they are artistically satisfying works of art. not because they are morally instructive.  They are stimulating and refreshing because with commonsense and briskness they brush away illusions and secondhand opinions. Satire exists because there is need for it. It has lived because readers appreciate a refreshing stimulus, cheap moralizing, and foolish philosophy. (32) Satire serves to stimulate people into an awareness of truth though rarely to any action on behalf of truth. (32) Satire tends to remind people that much of what they see, hear, and read in popular media is sentimental, and only partially true. Life resembles only to a slight degree the popular image of it. Soldiers rarely hold the ideals that movies are dedicated to them, nor do ordinary citizens devote their lives to unselfish service of humanity. Intelligent people know these things but tend to forget them when they do not hear them expressed.