After reading Siegel’s piece “Being There” from Against the Machine, I feel more confused than ever. I do not really understand what he is trying to get at in this part of his writing. The whole time he is criticizing people for not writing critically anymore, but just satirically and sarcastically. He says “Mockery and sarcasm, though, merely take information, crumble it up into a ball, and throw it back whence it came.” (3) I have no idea what this means, because I personally think that satire is just another form of criticism. People like Sacha Barron Cohen who criticize for a living just simply happen to do it in another way. Its not like they don’t understand and comprehend the issues they are criticizing, like Siegel seems to think. I mean haven’t some of the most powerful, famous novels been purely satirical? Those have never been criticized as people with information and no knowledge. People are constantly going to mock and ridicule things that are written or shown on TV, so I do not understand what Siegel is complaining about. This is nothing new, it has been happening forever.