WELL THAT IS PRETTY GODDAMN SNARKY: “[H]e looks like a dumpling in a wig.” What an awful thing to say about Russell Crowe, the Ted Kennedy of acting! [The New Yorker]

Just two weeks ago, fancy “old gray woman” the New York Times produced a comical document instructing its various blog editors to Avoid Snark Or Die. Really, they did this, at the NYT. “What should be avoided in all of them is any hint of racist, sexist or religious bias, or any suggestion of nasty, snide, sarcastic, or condescending tone — ’snark.’ If something could easily fit in a satirical Web site for young adults, it probably shouldn’t go into the news pages of nytimes.com.” Ahem. MORE »

THIS IS A FINE READ: A tipster informed us earlier this week that he’d seen an advance copy of this Sunday’s New York Times Book Review riff on David Denby’s dumb book of lies. He referred to it as a “trashing.” Well the review is online now, and yes, it is very much a trashing: “And that, sir, is snark, society’s arch­enemy — making light fun of vulgar criminal robber barons who steal more in a month than Capone stole in a decade.” Thank god they gave it to Walter Kirn, who’s basically the best contributing critic for the Book Review and reads much like Anthony Lane, the good film critic for the New Yorker. [NYT]

OH, DENBY’S STILL STINKING UP THE NPR SHOWS? Chronic masturbator and greedy day-trading halfwit David Denby continues to lie about his libel/slander against your Wonkette. Los Angeles Times book-blogger Carolyn Kellogg has an amusing update, and you can skip right ahead to 2:55 to see how Denby was telling more dumb lies on WNYC on Monday. What a bore. [LA Times/BuzzFeed/Jewcy/Time Out New York/Dallas Observer]

ZOMG inappropriate snarky baseless pointless no guiding political philosophy schadenfreude, also you are not allowed to put the word “happy” near a headline about cancer the end. [The Weekly Standard]

We truly do not want to prattle on about this nonsense much longer, but it’s fair to post our biased, liberal accounts of David Denby’s appearance on an NPR affiliate today, during which a HEROIC Wonkette reader made it through screeners (natch) to pose a question directly to this film demon re: his horrible errors against American Journalism. Much squirming, as well as new factual errors, ensued. MORE »

Alright, so we caved. We were at Borders and noticed New Yorker film critic David Denby’s new book, Snark, about how he hates bloggers, Sarah Palin, Maureen Dowd, Tom Wolfe and others for the exact same undefined reason. We actually bought the book (YOU’RE WELCOME DENBY) and were planning to skim for the Wonkette part, giggle, and then give the slender volume away to the nearest hobo. So, OH MAN. First he references one of your male associate editor’s posts about Chelsea Clinton and suggests that the “young women” who wrote it must have some catty jealousy issues, with their vaginas. Then he writes that we made fun of Ted Kennedy on the day of his brain tumor surgery, citing a post about something else entirely that was written seven months before Kennedy even got cancer. Damn those bloggers, always trying to ruin other peoples’ reputations with false information! MORE »

Back before the Republican party expelled all of its passable writers, conservatives liked Kathleen Parker. Now she has come over to the Dark Side and been expelled from the National Review, forever, so she wanders the wilderness in rags and swaddling cloths, lamenting the loss of her soul and shaking her chains like Jacob Marley. Today she has a little column in the liberal Washington Post about how Barack Obama is going to force the nation, at gunpoint, into being very earnest. It is fairly amusing. MORE »

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? MORE »