I'd like to speak up for the Federal Bureau of Irony. Irony is a precious natural resource that -- like most precious natural resources -- has been eroded a great deal lately. Today, after the Bureau of Public Affairs announced that the United States was going to host World Press Freedom Day 2011, Twitter exploded. "Impeccable timing: US celebrates Wikileaks arrest by announcing Press Freedom Day," Gizmodo tweeted. Soon everyone was abuzz! "From US Department of Irony!" foresmac crowed. "I finally found the perfect definition of irony," tweeted Codepo08, "The U.S. are hosting the World Press Freedom day! Well, no.

It's not ironic for the United States to host World Press Freedom Day! It's not even incongruous! We aren't North Korea or China -- or even Great Britain, where Liberace sued someone who described him as "fruit-flavoured" in an article and won! We are the United States, where Freedom of the Press is embedded in our way of life, enshrined in the First Amendment! I'm glad that everyone on Twitter is constantly vigilant, lest we suddenly become 1984; but we aren't there yet. Nor are we close. Sure, the timing of the announcement, on the day of the Assange arrest in the United Kingdom for crimes allegedly committed in Sweden, was inopportune.

But this is just an example of the weak, watered-down substance we are being forced to think of as irony. I miss back when we had real irony. Before the Alanis Morrissette song that convinced everyone that we knew what irony meant, we had real hard-core irony, like when you called something the War to End All Wars and then thirty years later you had another one. Or when you were the Consumer Product Safety Commission and you released metal buttons to promote safety, but then had to recall them because they contained too much lead paint, had sharp edges, and posed a choking hazard.

It's a traffic jam when you're already late? That's not irony. It's a traffic jam when you're the individual who designed the city's traffic flow to prevent traffic jams from occurring? That's irony. Ten thousand spoons when all you need is a knife? That's not irony. Ten thousand spoons when you exposed those spoons to die as infants after hearing a prophecy that they would kill you if they grew to manhood? That's closer. It's meeting the man of your dreams, then meeting his beautiful wife? Nope. It's meeting the man of your dreams, then becoming his beautiful wife, even though the audience knows he's your son, and then hanging yourself while he gouges out his eyes? Now we're talking!

It's an announcement that the U.S. is hosting World Press Freedom Day after WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is arrested in the United Kingdom on "sex by surprise" charges? Nope. If we'd just arrested Julian Assange for his actions as a reporter, then made the announcement, well, that would be ripe, vintage irony, the kind they don't make anymore. But as it is, in the words of my seventh grade English teacher on hearing "Ironic": That's not irony. It's just rotten timing.