Momus, the Greek god of satire, was expelled from Mount Olympus for his sharp-tongued criticism. He wasn't much more popular down here among the mortals, where Erasmus wrote that the god was “not quite as popular as [the others], because few people freely admit criticism, yet I dare say of the whole crowd of gods celebrated by the poets, none was more useful.”
Nothing can blend utility, charm, artful frankness, and analytical intelligence quite like satire. It can be light and giddy or plodding and terse. It can charm or appall. It will pragmatically assume any guise in order to hit its mark, and the heftier its target, the more impressive the strike. Like metaphor, satire tells us what we already know through an act of comparison in such a way that you're allowed to feel as if you're experiencing that truth for the first time. This is the subversive power of Momus: to paradoxically uncover obvious truths through minor dramatic misrepresentation.
Mike Chase, legal humorist known for his @CrimeADay Twitter feed and author of How To Become A Federal Criminal, is a contemporary disciple of Momus. The various ways in which someone can find themselves breaking federal law—from drinking a beer while on a bike in a national park to running your own mail-order denture business—is a perfect target for the cold eye of satire. Satire works best when it takes as its object of derision an irrational or incoherent use of power. What better example of that than the numberless codes, and laws which make up various federal statutes. As Chase writes in the book, it isn't difficult to commit a federal crime:
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