It is always sad to learn that a respected public thinker has spent any time at all reading new modern trash like Wonkette. Doesn’t the famous New Yorker critic and Internet porn addict David Denby have something better to do, like have lunch at the Algonquin Round Table, or floss his cat?
Denby has written a new book about “snark,” a word that should just be fucking BANISHED from modern usage along with expressions of approval that involve shooting liquids from the nose and ruining keyboards/computer screens. UGH NOT FUNNY.
Anyhow, David Denby does not care for this “snark,” and for “snarky” publications such as Private Eye and Spy and basically anything funny. Wonkette is lumped in with this group and called “proudly idiotic.” AWWWWW.
[UPDATE: We just read the comments on this article and saw that our esteemed editor Ken Layne made basically the same two observations, which is surely evidence of Wonkette's idiot hive mind.]
Snark Attack [New York Magazine Book Review]
{ 81 comments }
I mean, I could have written a serious rebuttal in the comments, but the Truck Nutz sirens were calling me.
Hey, whaddya know? Even al-Qaida likes the snark now:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090106/ap_on_re_mi_ea/ml_militants_bush_cat
Jack Shafer said the same thing as Denby, but in a funnier way, almost 5 years ago:
http://www.slate.com/id/2096976/
Mr. Denby might be confusing snark with wit, but, then again, maybe we are proud idiots.
We are the Wonk. Prepare to be assimilated.
Who?
This pompous fucktard is so wholly unimportant he hasn’t even been drawn to Dana Millbank’s attention. Whereas Billy Kristol has.
I rest my case.
What’s up Ken….no love for Maureen Dowd as a fellow snarkster? Love her exclusion.
Is it me, or are there a bunch of flies swarming around his head? Must smell like poopie.
This is a follow-up to Denby’s earlier work, Throwing Spitballs When the Substitute Teacher Turns His Back: It’s Mean, It’s Immature, and I’m Telling.
“Proudly idiotic.” Excellent! Right up there with Dame Peggy’s “dizzy children.”
BTW, that Nerve.com article about movie critics is news I can use!
He should masturbate. More.
Five years too late, Denby’s on his usual time. I think Malcolm Gladwell wrote about internet porn twenty years ago. You’re his bitch, Denby.
[re=209679]hockeymom[/re]: Maureen Dowd is not funny. The end.
David Dun Be a dumb arse.
Thanks, [re=209684]magic titty[/re] for my first coffee on the keyboard moment.
[re=209686]Sara K. Smith[/re]: She KILLS at DAR cocktail parties.
Denby, you stupid bitch, lay not our brilliant snarkocity at the feet of that hack Denton. This is Layne’s world. Come and play, if you dare, you bloviating hack.
[re=209684]magic titty[/re]: there is not enough lubrication in the world to help him.
Helen Thomas has chunks of female journos like MoDo in her stool. Either that or the Senior Special at the buffet needs more fiber.
[re=209686]Sara K. Smith[/re]: Not only is she not funny…she is a lazy, mean writer who wastes her talents by casually dropping increasingly irrelevent bon mots into a bunch of paragraphs that she calls a column. She is the Dennis Miller of the print world.
boo hoo. a world without being mean and funny? that’s like having a twinky without the filling.
There – an essay on the Wonkette Comma in the comments. Discourse = elevated
Now that the PUMAs and public thinkers are all picking on us, do we get some sort of professional victim prize, like a weblog award, or something.
Denby looks like he wears briefs that are 20+ years-old. He also probably smells like sour milk.
His book is the literary equivalent of “get off my lawn, you meddling kids”!
I think that’s in the first paragraph of the review. Uh-oh. Well, if the shoe fits, throw it.
[re=209704]Jobbotch[/re]: ooh, brilliant. This comment also was quite good:
MOAR TRUKC NUTZ
By AlanKeyes on 01/06/2009 at 11:07 am
A whole book? I hope it has a lot of pictures.
Someone paid this guy to write this book. When codgers are available on every block to yell, “You kids get off my lawn” for free. The mind, it boggles.
SPY?? I thought SPY was over! Short fingered vulgarians beware!
(Oh alright, I guess I’ll have to read the article…)
Denby looks like a guy who you stumble upon brushing his teeth in an interstate rest stop bathroom. You just really, really, rilly hope he’s into good oral hygiene. And alone.
He says “proudly idiotic” like it’s a bad thing.
O tempora, o mores! O, bite me, Denby.
[re=209713]Tommy Says Soooo[/re]: You win the Royal Trucknutz Prize for snark…. The Grand Prize is an hour in an interstate rest stop bathroom with David Denby.
[re=209681]SayItWithWookies[/re]: Was that his follow up to his earlier earlier work, Lookit, Mommy! Lookit What I Did!: Thoughts On Crapping Under The Basement Stairs?
[re=209705]WIDTAP[/re]: There’s a Cabinet post in it.
Ya know, people with who write entire books about their internet porn addiction and ability to fritter away their retirement account on teh stock markets should not throw stones. A man his age might get a hernia.
Chaucer, Shakespeare, Hiroshige.
They all loved snark.
Proud idiot, reporting for duty, ma’am.
Recalling that irony died on 9/11, what was snark to do but soldier on?
“Did we simply transform overnight into a nation of venal assholes?”
No, that mostly started after World War II.
Seriously, when was the last time this pinhead had any relevence?
David Denby… a man ahead of his time.
SNARK.
Maureen Down is Lizard People.
[re=209681]SayItWithWookies[/re]: LOL – ROTFLAMAO!
[/shooting liquids from the nose and ruining keyboards/computer screens.]
I always thought that the Algonquin Pizza Hut was better.
Bah. Snark is merely what people have been saying throughout the ages, even in the ‘glorious’ ’30s and ’40s (NB: Tallulah Bankhead). Only now, thanks to teh Intarwebs, you can read it.
i’ll go with his flossing the bushes dead cat.
What was that about Maureen Dowd flossing her pussy?
[re=209708]Doglessliberal[/re]: That was me! Hehehehehehehe!
Denby looks like a typical ivy-grad, fat dullard. Daddy, can i has the world?
Fuck you David.
It’s worth mentioning that Sternbergh’s review of the book is a pretty good defense of snarkiness. Which doesn’t change the fact that Nick Denton is a douchebag.
Also, it seems to me that Denby has lumped a bunch of apples together with oranges. Spy had a sense of morality and judgement about what it mocked–a POV despising hypocrisy, vulgarity, and bad writing. Maybe Wonkette and say, Jezebel also have values, although you assholes would never come out and print some “credo” or “manifesto.” Gawker, not so much–it seems to be about chronicling the worthlessness of Media attempting to make money when everything wants to be free. Meanwhile, Denton slave-drives his crew to pack more and more posts onto the site every day in order to make more money picking at all the carcasses. Are those guys impervious to the irony of their own business plan?
Anyway, it was either Oscar Wilde or Graham Chapman who said, “the only thing worse than being snarked about is not being snarked about.”
[re=209681]SayItWithWookies[/re]: you win!
You know, he’s right. I get a lot more out of reading serious articles and earnest posts regarding Sarah Palin’s bright future than I do out of coming here and seeing people call her a heap of human garbage. And it wasn’t snark that settled that very serious Schaivo thing, was it? There’s nothing funny at all about the totally true factual claim that Bush reads lots of books. Hmmm… suddenly I feel the need to participate in a very serious discussion on whether or not white trash mythology should be taught in science classrooms.
I have to disagree. Snark is an awesome word. I’m just glad that it’s coming back into the common lexicon, as I was beginning to think that my mother had invented the term.
This is a humor site, first and foremost. The site refers to other stories. The site don’t necessarily break stories, although, in a way, it does indeed either break stories or publicize stories that subsequently get national attention. The site gathers, collects, analyzes and comments on news stories of all types, often in a very entertaining, informative and funny way–in some small ways, that is still journalism. But the site is not and does not pretend to be The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times or The Chicago Tribune, which are still among the top news sources in the United States, even in January, 2009.
So if you don’t like or understand this great, humor satire site and what it does–don’t read it!
But don’t bash it if you don’t understand what it is–and that goes for this goofball Denby guy, too. And those morons at PUMA.
Again: If you don’t understand something, ask about it and research it, but don’t bash it until you’ve done your reseach.
“We are the Idiot Hive Mind. Resistance is futile. You will be assinine.”
What’s the mystery? As stated he has a porn addiction. We reads Wonkette. ‘Nuff said.
[re=209947]Min[/re]: I think it’s “You will be Ass-sex-simulated.”
I’m actually OK with Denby, though he doesn’t seem to appreciate that snark is the more-ebullient first cousin of wit, which is odd, since he’s fairly witty guy in many of his film reviews.
But like his Great-Aunt (in spirit) Dorothy Parker, he sometimes seems a bit too enamored of his own wit.
[re=209918]AnnieGetYourFun[/re]: It’s a bit older than your mother. If Wikipedia is correct, it was invented by Lewis Carroll and first appeared in his poem “The Hunting of the Snark.” So Wonketteers should be proud of their snarky history.
fuckin’ beardies.
he should read the new yorker more:
http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2005/01/03/050103crci_cinema
favorite movie review ever.
Denby’s had a hard time. He had to read all of those ‘Great Books’ for his book on Great Books, then his wife left him for another woman, and then he lost all of his money in the stock market. Irony, and it’s ugly sister snark, are lost on him now.
I have always believed that the purpose of Wonkette was to unmask and mock the “proudly idiotic”, of which I now consider David Denby one.
Gee. I guess he just doesn’t get the point. I thought the wonkerrati were all about the idiocy. I toggle between wonkette and the Christian Science Monitor. This way, my brain balanced and when I quote an article, I seldom forget from which of my two news sources it came.
(And Denby: Please take note that I did not end that sentence with the preposition. Your welcome.)
[re=209930]thefrontpage[/re]: Actually, between PUMA basing wonkette and now this guy, our cozy little community has gained several new members. Wait, on second thought, maybe it’s not a good thing that the more wonkette is called idiotic, the more readers wonkette attracts. What does this say about our society? I suppose I could read Denby’s article and find out but then, I’m too busy reading wonkette.
[re=209790]liquiddaddy[/re]: And NEVER FORGET!!!1!
I think Wonkette is more like “idiotically proud.”
Just remember, snark is a moment, but snide is 4eva!
[re=210027]Lascauxcaveman[/re]: No, snark is the affectless teenage cousin of wit. Wit is the hottie aunt you only see over the holidays to humor. Humor is the nutty uncle stuck sitting in his recliner to comedy. Comedy is the drippy-nosed nephew to contempt.
Private Eye is a lot less funny than it thinks it is though.
Well, that’s only fair: David Denby is idiotically proud, when he should be cowering in shame. American Sucker indeed!
[re=210342]snideinplainsight[/re]: Clearly, you’ve thought this out more carefully than I.
I defer, Sir.
As the proud PUMAs say, “Why snark when you can snack?” (You said we weren’t allowed to make fat jokes over on the other story, but you didn’t say that here.)
[re=210356]A Geek Tragedy[/re]: I think it has to do something with the paper Private Eye is printed on. Newsprint is so un-snarky
[re=210356]A Geek Tragedy[/re]: It’s humor may tend towards the formulaic by now, but it’s ongoing puncturing of the vast pretensions of British politics remains great. It’s the only magazine I’ve read consistently for the last 20 years. Hislop is a gifted editor and funny man who also has a genuine sense of responsibility (his early libel mistakes notwithstanding).
The Eye is still the most effective muckraker publication in Britain today, surely?
[re=209679]hockeymom[/re]: Maureen Dowd is Perez Hilton without dick drawings.
Hey there! Stop that shit now.
Denby’s claim that snark isn’t intelligent is FOS. For instance, I read a comment the other day that was both:
“Sarah Palin’s politics are like vector bosons in relativistic gauge theory, i.e., naively massless.”
That’s smart and, if you are a physics geek, probably funny. It is certainly snark.
Reading Denby’s book is similar to reading Bush’s book on current history. Just doesn’t fucking get it and you can’t explain it to him.
[re=211518]Boojum[/re]: I’ve seen Sarah’s bosons and they are not massless!
Etiology multiple choice:
a) Snide + bark
b) Snappy + dark
c) Skid + mark
d) Nonsense term coined by Louis Carroll
e) all or none of the above
wonkette hates america
[re=211518]Boojum[/re]: Agreed. Denby has shown himself to be a complete buffoon.
True snark requires four elements:
1. Knowledge of subject
2. Awareness of its place in a larger cultural perspective
3. Zero tolerance for bullshit and hypocrisy
4. The wit (or a sufficiently warped mind, if you prefer) to effectively bring them all together
To imply that such people are unintelligent is something Dingbat does at his peril.
…And the fifth element? You, the reader. In order to appreciate snark, the reader must also possess the first four. Maybe that’s Dengleby’s problem- He just doesn’t get it.
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