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Satire is probably an inaccurate label for 'Catcher.' It mostly satires the rise of the entertainment industy. Salinger viewed the increasing popularity of movies and the emerging culture of celebrity-worship with disgust, believing that sort of external awe and indentification drove a wedge between people and the real world and, especially, their families. For instance, when Holden is at Radio City music hall, the women tries merely to silence her child without addressing the what it is that's making the child cry, illustrating that she cares more for the entertainment. Holden, disconnected from his own family, is supposedly a victim of this. Holden's accusation of phoniness, though he apparently doesn't realize himself, spread to everyone is deified for entertaining people, which is why Salinger went into seclusion, and probably why Chapman killed Lennon.
It's probable that Salinger wanted the reader to realize that all of Holden's illusions, like his idealized Jane (which I'll talk about again a little later), are caused by the influence that the entertainment industry has over him.
Aside from that, the book is more serious than satirical, striving primarily for a direct appeal. All of the talk about Holden killing his sister stems from Holden's fantasy of saving children from the cliff. Clearly, Holden struggles throughout the entire book with the equal draw of staying a child and growing up. The fundamental change of growing up is sex, perversion, and the complete loss of innocence, which Holden half desires and half loathes. Holden is the little boy walking on the curb, precariously perched on the border of the street (the dangers of the outside world) and the distant protection of his parents. The cliff that Holden speaks of is that big sexual leap into adulthood, and the only way to prevent the young, who are much more ignorant of the cliff (sex) than is Holden, from going is over is to kill them before they grow up. Jane is Holden's last resort, a sexual object that would protect his purity and innocence. Holden never calls her because he knows, KNOWS, that Jane is really no different than all of the other girls in the book (the woman getting the champagne shower, the girls he dances with in the club, Sally).
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