Poe's law anyone? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe%27s_law
Yeah, yeah. If Messrs Morgan, Poe, and Schwarz didn't waste so much time on the internet, they'd have no problem. Recognizing written satire is trivial, a matter easily grasped even by very small children, like the well-known logical rule that a double positive statement always makes a negative.
If detection were really so difficult, satirical practitioners would have to "go off the rails" at some point in a faint hope of distinguishing themselves from the genuine kooks, and what writer has attempted that?
No, their literary proposals remain far more modestly scribed -- no historical writers, and not even the extraterrestrials from cygnus X-1 (the skins of whose children, by the way, make admirable gloves for ladies, and summer boots for fine gentlemen) whose radio signals inspired this posting, have ever done any such thing.
-Dave
