AboutSatire
We study American politics the way documentaries study wildebeest.
National Sarcastic is a parody magazine. We take real national news, mostly politics, and cover it in the hushed, reverent voice of a nature documentary: voters as a migratory species, cable news as a feeding frenzy, Congress as an endangered ecosystem that somehow never goes extinct.
Our premise
People are remarkably easy to fool. Put almost anything in front of them, with the right photo and a confident caption, and a lot of them will believe it and pass it on. We know this, because we are the ones writing the absurd stories.
So we do something most manipulators won’t: we show our work. Many stories end with Editor’s Manipulation Notes, an “internal memo” that grades how well the story would have fooled people, names the persuasion tricks it used (false precision, invented authority, tribal framing, urgency, the anonymous source), and suggests how a worse publication would have rewritten it. The joke is on the technique. The goal is a reader who can spot it.
Who we make fun of
Everyone. Both parties, all the cap colors, the pundits, the pollsters, the fundraising emails, and especially the reader who is sure this article is about someone else. Public figures may be mocked. They are never reported on here.
Satire disclaimer
National Sarcastic is a satire publication. Everything on this site, including articles, headlines, quotes, statistics, experts, institutes, bylines, captions, and photos, is invented for comedy and commentary. Nothing here is news, and nothing here should be read as a statement of fact about any real person or organization.
Our staff, experts, and quoted people are fictional. Our photographs are AI-generated or staged illustrations and do not depict real, identifiable people.
Not affiliated with National Geographic. National Sarcastic is a parody. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, sponsored by, or connected to National Geographic, the National Geographic Society, or any of their partners. Our tilted, cracked frame is our own mark.
Privacy
This site uses no analytics, no tracking pixels, and no cookies. Fonts load from Google Fonts.
Masthead
Fictional, like everything else: Dr. Margaret Fieldnote (Senior Explorer, Field Studies), Theodore Quagmire (Embarrass), Hollis Longlens and Inés Telefoto (Photography), and P.T.B. of the Desk of Persuasion, who writes the Manipulation Notes and insists the initials stand for nothing.