Satire often points a critical finger at the centers of power. Sometimes the dominant culture will satirize itself, and sometimes in-groups will use satire to justify their elevated status over particular out-groups, but in many instances, satire requires a combined sense of marginalization and superiority to be effective. Satire works best when normative/dominant values are ridiculed by those who perceive themselves to be unjustly pushed to the periphery. On television, satire rarely begins at the margins and takes a critical look at itself. One possible explanation follows Kobena Mercer's argument that people of color experience a dialectical tension when self-representing in public forums where they are aware that white audiences are also watching, which potentially brings the satirist’s critical insider/outsider position into conflict with the marginalized group’s desire to counter/challenge a long history of negative stereotypes. When satire from the margins that is directed at itself does appear, it often inadvertently duplicates existing social hierarchies within out-groups while relying on an inverted sense of marginality, whereby the more privileged members accuse the less advantaged of contributing to the entire group’s continued secondary status in society. In this January 15, 2006 episode of Aaron Mcgruder’s The Boondocks, created to coincide with Martin Luther King Day, the politically-charged animated series veers into fantasy, imagining that King was not assassinated, but had merely lapsed into a coma, waking in time for the 2000 elections (he is turned away due to voting irregularities). Huey Freeman, The Boondocks 10-year-old black radical, convinces King that he needs to organize a Black political party and rally the African-American voters for change. Quickly, however, this new Black Party turns into a block party. Seeing the political apathy of young Black voters, King wails against the community, retooling his famous “I have a Dream” speech in order to indict the crowd as a “bunch a ignorant Niggas”. The episode ends with a montage of angry Black protesters in front of the White house, as Huey tells the TV audience that King’s speech finally got people angry enough to take action. In skewering a sacred cow, Mcgruder told Nightline “In the episode King is critical of our apathy and our inactivity… we carry the blame of our own apathy and our own inactivity… we deserve to take a look at that and be honest about it”. Yet, his strategy for commenting on the failures of mobilizing black voters relies heavily on the politics of identity, whereby “Niggas” are constructed in opposition to “Citizens” who presumably participate in civic life and agitate for equal rights and against oppression. In so doing, Mcgruder not only espouses a troubling classed and generational critique in line with Bill Cosby’s 2004 attack on poor blacks for having ‘bad values,’ but his satirical juxtaposition of Civil Rights era politics of equality with contemporary politics of difference also points to the current struggle that marginalized groups face in articulating a differentiated citizenship, where different experiences are acknowledged but equal opportunities are still guaranteed. Does satirizing identity politics lend too easily to overstating the role of personal responsibility in the face of continued institutional barriers to equal opportunities? How can marginalized groups participate in current practices of self-expression and self-critique central to identity-based citizenship when those very criticisms are often used against them by both the dominant culture and by privileged members of the out-group to justify their continued failures to attain/take advantage of their equal citizenship status? Finally, if you've enjoyed this week's TV, satire and politics-themed week, please check out these previous contributions on the topic by Mark Andrejevic, Megan Boler, Richard Edwards, Jonathan Gray, and Jeff Sconce