Tiger Beatdown

Writing a book titled Snark: It’s Mean, It’s Personal, and It’s Ruining Our Conversation is like writing a book titled Keying My Car: It’s the Wrong Thing to Do, or Why Flaming Bags of Dog Poop on My Doorstep Just Aren’t Funny.

Does anyone else get the sense that the people who are all, “jokes! They ruin everything! Now, please be civil and attend to my grandma-y prose” are just really sharply aware of how inherently ridiculous they are? David Denby is basically volunteering to become the entire world’s dorky substitute biology teacher, on the very day that we’re all supposed to learn the meaning of the word “organism.” We’re going to hear the phrases “act your age” and “now, settle down” a WHOLE LOT from this dude, in essence.

We’re bored, we hate it here (“here” being the culture at large, I guess), and he’s making it way too easy. (“The most gifted writer of snark in the country!” Is how he describes Maureen Dowd!!!) Yeah, it is probably immature and non-productive to poke fun at Denby. Then again, if he wants to avoid it, he should perhaps practice the tactic used by the above-quoted reviewer, Adam Sternbergh: being right.