The study of satire as a genre has little to say about it as an expository – especially journalistic – form. The problem is to define the literary character of journalistic satire, to delineate the characteristics that distinguish it from ordinary reportage and from essays of opinion. What distinguishes satire in a journalistic medium that, like satire, is historical and frequently dialectical? Once these questions have been addressed, a more basic question – how satire operates within the variety of discourses that make up journalism – can then be answered. Journalistic satire is characteristically a journalism of attack, but it shares that characteristic with much non-satiric journalism. Its satiric character becomes more apparent in the indirections, concealments, and strategies by which it attacks. Its nature is revealed when it becomes less concerned with the accuracy of facts or the validity of arguments than with the nature of political discourse itself. My contention in this chapter is that the primary function of journalistic satire is not to disprove or outargue an opponent but to assert that the opponent lacks the capacity to communicate. Satire's concern is secondarily with the intricacies of the opponent's argument but primarily with the act of communication itself. Two examples, considered in some detail, stand imperfectly for a range of satiric journalism, but they provide a model of satire's contention that its opponent supplies at best an illusion of communication.