I overheard someone commenting once that we need a word for something beyond irony, because so much that happens in Washington exceeds what we normally think of as ironic.

This is true, and apparently it applies to the left coast as well. I saw a trailer for an upcoming movie, Paycheck, based on a Philip K Dick story of the same name. The trailer starts off by telling us that. in the future, the basis of all busines will be reverse engineering, and that our protagonist is the best reverse engineer in the business.

Why is this trans-ironic? Well, because the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA), passed under the Clinton administration, outlawed reverse engineering, and the Motion Pictures Association of America (MPAA), which runs annoying “public service announcements” before movies telling us not to pirate movies, was one of the primary forces behind that law. And here they are, glorifying the violation of it.

PKD would be amused.