Snark

David Denby video interview - part 2

2009-09-23T17:09:00.001+01:00

David Denby video interview - part 1

2009-09-23T17:04:00.004+01:00

Snarky quotes from Simon Amstell

2009-08-28T11:59:00.004+01:00

Simon Amstell: So Penny, you used to do a fashion column for the Daily Mail, didn't you?
Penny Smith: Yes I've done many strange things in my time.
Simon Amstell: So what does one wear to a lynching?

"Jordan's third favourite tit and second favourite twat - it's Peter Andre!"

Simon Amstell: They tried to make me go to rehab...
Amy Winehouse: I said no no no
Simon Amstell: Correct. But in hindsight do you think yes maybe?

"Hello, 50 Cent here. People say my music is gratuitously violent and misogynistic - but what they don't realise is that I'm just talking about where I'm from. And where I'm from, everybody's a vile millionaire rapper and all woman are rubbish sluts."

Snarky Columnists (3) - Marina Hyde

2009-08-28T11:36:00.003+01:00

Marina Hyde of The Guardian has a "peek at the diary of Peter Andre":

"Seeing the pictures of Katie canoodling with that cage fighter in front of our kids was the worst day of my life. "It was the worst day of my life," I told whichever magazine whose turn it was to get that hour's World!!! Exclusive!!!

I know people may be bored of our divorce now. Even I'm bored of our divorce now. "Even I'm bored of our divorce now," I told the BBC, breaking my silence again. "I think people want to get back to my music." The reporter said it was lovely I hadn't lost my sense of humour.

I called another mag. "Close pals say I haven't lost my sense of humour," I exclusively revealed.

Of course, my number one priority is that the kids aren't affected by all this. They need continuity. They need things to stay as normal as possible – and that means constant TV camera presence, playing their winsome part in paparazzi shots, and their parents discussing every aspect of their lives across a range of content delivery platforms. I'm not pitching for Celebrity Dad Of The Year – although it would be an honour to be nominated in the same category as David and Brad – but I think I've managed that."

Snarky, or fair enough?

"Critical Shopper" steps over the line

2009-08-28T10:57:00.004+01:00

An article from The New York Times about the arrival of J.C Penney - an American department store - in Manhattan provoked outrage comment with its snarky emaphsis on size:

"Why would this perennially square department store bother to reanimate itself in Manhattan — in the sleekest, scariest fashion city in America — during a hair-raising economic downturn, without taking the opportunity to vigorously rebrand itself? Why would this dowdy Middle American entity waddle into Midtown in its big old shorts and flip-flops without even bothering to update its ancient Helvetica Light logo, which for anyone who grew up with the company is encrusted with decades of boring, even traumatically parental, associations?

It took me a long time to find a size 2 among the racks. There are, however, abundant size 10’s, 12’s and 16’s...and herein lies the genius of J. C. Penney: It has made a point of providing clothing for people of all sizes (a strategy, company officials have said, to snatch business from nearby Macy’s). To this end, it has the most obese mannequins I have ever seen. They probably need special insulin-based epoxy injections just to make their limbs stay on. It’s like a headless wax museum devoted entirely to the cast of “Roseanne.”"

Clark Hoyt details the response to the article here. He concludes: "The column raised an issue that The Times and other news organizations sometimes struggle with: What is the difference between edgy and objectionable? Or, as one reader, Daniel Harris-McCoy of Boston, put it: How do writers “navigate the fine lines between observation, satire and snark,” and when should editors step in to restrain them?"

Save the whales, Lose the Blubber

2009-08-28T10:49:00.004+01:00

Animal rights activism group PETA sparked criticism last week with their snarky poster, featuring the slogan "Save the Whales, Lose the Blubber: Go Vegetarian" next to a picture of an obese woman in a bikini.

"It was a scene right out of Mean Girls, only it was adults, and supposedly those who are working toward the good of the planet," wrote an unimpressed Sarah Gilbert. The billboard has since been taken down and replaced with the less snarky slogan of "GONE: Just like all the pounds lost by people who go vegetarian".

Vogue model wins right to unmask snarky blogger

2009-08-24T10:53:00.003+01:00

Snark practitioners around the world beware. If you thought you could rely on the anonymity of the internet, you're wrong. Last week Vogue cover girl Liskula Cohen won the right to discover the identity of a blogger who offensively called her a "skank" on the blog Skanks in NY.

As The Times reports, the blogger "Anonymous" wrote “I would have to say the first-place award for ‘Skankiest in NYC’ would have to go to Liskula Gentile Cohen." They went on to ridicule the model as a “40-something” who “may have been hot 10 years ago”, when she was actually 36.

Cohen sought the identity of the blogger so she could sue for defamation, and had her wish granted by a Manhattan supreme court judge who ordered Google to hand the information over. Justice Joan Madden rejected the blogger’s claim that the blogs “serve as a modern-day forum for conveying personal opinions, including invective and ranting”, and should not be treated as factual assertions.

Does this ruling put the future of snark in jeapordy?

Celebritology article sparks discussion about snark

2009-08-20T15:18:00.002+01:00

Last Thursday, an article in The Washington Post prompted an online debate over the depths to which snark can descend. The article was about a "possible schizophrenic" claiming to have mothered Michael Jackson's three children:

"...Cruise claims to be the biological mother of Prince Michael, Paris and Blanket but not to have actually carried them herself. Not only that -- she says Jackson fathered a fourth child with her then forced her to give that child up to Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman. Which is probably ultimately okay, right?, since she also claims to have married Tom Cruise when she was nine years old..."

Some readers felt this snark was below the belt, but Liz Kelly (author) had some defendants:

"Ok, come on Liz. I'll go along with a lot of things, but clearly this woman is mentally unstable. It's not news, not gossip either. It's just mean."

"I cannot believe this appeared on a Web site even remotely associated with the Washington Post, much less on its actual Web site. Please, take this down, and put up something more appropriate."

"I'm quite surprised that some of the regulars are so offended by the post...The woman sought media attention and here it is...I am just amazed by the hypocrisy showcased regularly in these comments. You say you want snark and put up stuff that might get you assaulted were you to say it to someone's face and here you are crying about a post that is relatively tame. Wow, just wow."

"...the issue is not snarking, or that 90% of the stuff on this blog is not really news -- the issue is that at some point you have to draw the line on providing media coverage of mentally ill people."

"Is it safe to snark, can I come out now?"

The Jonathan Ross debacle - snark, or just plain rude?

2009-08-20T10:42:00.007+01:00

The prank calls made by Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand to actor Andrew Sachs sparked national condemnation earlier this year.

Message 1:
Ross: He f***** your granddaughter…I’m sorry I apologise. Andrew, I apologise, I got excited, what can I say – it just came out.
Brand: Andrew Sachs, I did not do nothing with Georgina – oh no, I’ve revealed I know her name. Oh no, it’s a disaster.
Ross: If he’s like most people of a certain age, he’s probably got a picture of his granddchildren when they’re young right by the phone. So while he’s listening to the messages, he’s looking at a picture of her about nine on a swing….

Message 2:
Brand: Andrew, this is Russell Brand. I'm so sorry about the last message, it was part of the radio show - it was a mistake."
Ross: "It might be true but we didn't want to break it to you in such a harsh way."
Brand: "No, I'm sorry, I'll do anything. I wore a condom. Put the phone down. Oh, what's going to happen?"

Message 3:
Ross: "She was bent over the couch..."
Brand then improvises a song which includes the lines: "I said some things I didn't of oughta, like I had sex with your granddaughter..."

The calls resulted in a hefty £150,000 fine for the BBC, suspension without pay for Jonathon Ross and nearly 40,000 complaints. However, is it snark? If not, how do we differentiate between snark and other personal attack?

Krugman vs Ferguson: Obama and Felix the Cat

2009-08-20T10:18:00.004+01:00

American blogger Paul Krugman asked "Are there no editors?" after Neil Ferguson wrote an article in the Financial Times that began:

"President Barack Obama reminds me of Felix the Cat. One of the best-loved cartoon characters of the 1920s, Felix was not only black. He was also very, very lucky. And that pretty much sums up the 44th president of the US..."

Ferguson defended himself in an article named "Why My Comparing Obama to Felix the Cat is not Racist," arguing that "Black cats are proverbially lucky" and "Felix the cartoon character was a black cat, not an African-American cat - in other words, he was not one of the (quite numerous) 1920s figures in popular entertainment that mocked the mannerisms of the descendants of slaves."

Krugman had this final note on the matter:

"For the record, I don’t think that Professor Ferguson is a racist.
I think he’s a poseur.
I’m told that some of his straight historical work is very good. When it comes to economics, however, he hasn’t bothered to understand the basics, relying on snide comments and surface cleverness to convey the impression of wisdom. It’s all style, no comprehension of substance.
And this time he ended up choking on his own snark."

Do we agree?

Is snark an empty discourse?

2009-08-12T16:28:00.004+01:00

Hugo Rifkind challenges Denby's analysis of snark in his recent review:

"Snarking online bothers Denby mainly because of its anonymity. He finds it, he writes, redolent of the start of The Trial by Kafka — “Somebody must have slandered Joseph K., for one morning, without having done anything truly wrong, he was arrested” — but I suspect this is because he takes snark altogether too seriously. “Why hide behind a handle?” he asks. “The answer, of course, is that the anonymous writers are either ashamed of what they’re saying, or , alternately, quite proud of what they’re saying, but in either case they’re not eager to confront anyone directly.”

Exactly wrong, I’d say. Your classic snarker is neither proud of the substance of their message nor ashamed of it, but entirely indifferent to it. They care only about the joke. Anonymity lets you enjoy the clever words without having to worry about being taken to task for their meaning. That’s snark all over. It’s this emptiness — the essential glibness of snark — that Denby can’t seem to grasp. He wants snarkers to have motives, and they don’t."

Do snarkers have motives?

Snarky columnists (2) - Matthew Norman

2009-08-12T16:11:00.003+01:00

According to Hugo Rifkind, the Independent's Matthew Norman is one of the only snarky British journalists around. Check out this article from the Press Awards Columnist of the Year 2008:

"So where is our Chancellor hiding?

He seems to be intent on going down as the biggest pussy ever to hold an office of state.

This is a Missing Persons Alert. Caucasian, mid-late 50s, slender build, snowy white receding hair, pitch black eyebrows, faintly bemused expression, not heard from in several weeks, If you should come across this man, who answers to the nickname of "Chancellor", please inform the authorities at once. Do not – repeat NOT – approach him directly. Although not thought to be dangerous, he may become alarmed and make a run for it. Well, it's worth a try, even if it's probably me being sentimental yet again. Much more likely, Alistair Darling is being held in captivity, in a dungeon beneath No 10, being repeatedly given a message which might, with a certain licence, be boiled down to "Shut it, you slaaag" by a combination of his colleagues.

There is a doppelganger – more than likely a form of android – that pitches up on the government front bench now and then. It's an uncanny likeness, and Mrs Maggie Darling herself would struggle to tell them apart, but there is a giveaway. Although it can nod its head approvingly at whatever gibberish a colleague is intoning, and even give the defiant boxer's false smile that belies the pain of suffering a direct hit from David Cameron, it cannot speak.

The disappearance of the real Alistair Darling is the most mysterious vanishing act since Agatha Christie. At a time of intense economic crisis, with apocalyptic OECD projections underscoring abysmal new figures about the economy's contraction, the man nominally in charge of economic policy is deafeningly silent."

Is the UK immune to snark?

2009-08-12T15:57:00.002+01:00

Britain is too cynical to be troubled by snark, according to Hugo Rifkind in The Times.

"...not much snark in our papers, however hard you look. Nor on television, aside from Have I Got News For You? (although Jeremy Paxman sometimes comes close). And yet our conversation, day to day, oozes with the stuff. To bitch, to gossip, to backstab, to slag off, to unfairly lampoon — this is the essence of basic British chat. Indeed, when our public figures get in trouble for their jokes, this is invariably the result of habitual, insensitive conversational snark spilling over into the public sphere, where we don’t think it ought to be. Think of Jeremy Clarkson describing Gordon Brown as a “one-eyed Scottish idiot”, or David Cameron ridiculing ID cards by adopting a German accent, or Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand getting carried away on the radio, or Gordon Ramsay likening an Australian TV personality to a lesbian pig. Think of the Duke of Edinburgh, over and over again...

...So now you know. That’s snark. Is it coming here? Could be. But maybe pious, wholesome America was particularly vulnerable to this epidemic. If, as Denby says, snark is “spreading like pinkeye through their national conversation”, maybe that’s because the American national conversation didn’t see it coming, and is mesmerised by what it can do. But here, in sly, knowing, cynical Britain, I suspect that what they call snark has been the bedrock of our national conversation for years. Yeah. We’ll be fine."

Will we?

Scott Pack on Snark

2009-08-11T14:20:00.002+01:00

Scott posts his quick review of the book on his blog:

Oh this is good. A measured, amusing and incisive attack on 'snarking' - the low-grade, insult-based journalism and humour which seems very much the rage at the moment. Essential reading for Nick Cohen and Tim Adams methinks. Oh, and probably for me too. (****)

Increasing awareness of snark

2009-08-10T11:44:00.006+01:00

In The Book Design Review, Joseph Sullivan juxtaposed these two covers "with no snarky intention".

Why would Sullivan be so careful to differentiate his intentions - asking why TV is so often the "go-to design trope" for popular culture - from snark?

Snarky columnists (1) - Maureen Dowd

2009-08-05T14:48:00.003+01:00

Denby flags up Maureen Dowd as a prime snark writer. Here is an extract from her Sarah's Secret Diary, written for the New York Times in mockery of Sarah Palin:

"No one understands me. It’s like I’m speaking some Eskimo dialect or something. Andrea Mitchell follows me all the way to Kanakanak Beach and I get a French manicure and set up this huge photo op for her, even though she spooked the salmon.

Todd and me are in our cool fishing bibs. Piper’s helping out on the boat. It’s an amazing day that shows how our Creator favored my beloved Alaska, gatekeeper of the continent, and makes a great shot for all the network reporters up here to milk. This progresses me away from my image as some kind of flaky “rogue diva” and back to my image as a tough huntin’ and fishin’ gal.

But Andrea makes such a darn big deal about how I’m quitting in the middle of my term.

“You’re not listening to me!” I snap.

She says maybe I didn’t want to go back to the nitty-gritty of Alaska politics after the bright lights of the national campaign.

“The nitty-gritty, like, you mean, the fish slime and the dirt under the fingernails and stuff that’s me?” I said. Awesome response, huh?!!"

Jonathon Little - The Kindly Ones

2009-08-03T14:17:00.004+01:00

Sometimes a book comes along that is so divisive it causes a rift within newspapers. Such was Jonathon Little's The Kindly Ones, greeted by rave reviews in Europe when it was published in 2006. In The Times Review Anthony Beevor hailed the "epic novel" as "a great work of literary fiction, to which readers and scholars will turn for decades to come".

Peter Kemp, in The Sunday Times Review, thought a little differently:

...now made available to English readers in a translation by Charlotte Mandell, The Kindly Ones will surely cause jaws here to drop with a different kind of amazement. For Jonathan Littell's 984-page book is so bloatedly inept that its reverential reception across the Channel seems barely comprehensible...

...The first of the book's numerous improbabilities is Aue's prodigious capacity to recall in profuse, minute detail all that was done and said (often in voluminously voluble speeches) more than 50 years earlier. Inability to forget isn't his only elephantine characteristic. Thumping ponderousness resounds through his mammoth monologue...

...Incontinence is a big problem for Aue, whose virtually incessant bouts of diarrhoea and lengthy nightmares about unstaunchable bowel motions are chronicled copiously (the one literary award this novel could credibly receive, you feel, would be for Most Loose-Sphinctered Fictional Narrator). All of this leaves Littell with a problem on his hands in trying to convince you that Aue is a kind of Everyman (“I tell you I am just like you!”) unluckily born into the wrong historical circumstances..."

Is a review this snarky ever justifiable?

David Mitchell has a snarky moment

2009-08-03T14:01:00.003+01:00

David Mitchell, of Peep Show fame, had a lot to say about Sarkozy in his column for The Guardian on Sunday.

"Isn't Nicolas Sarkozy a funny fellow? All small and old and out of breath and falling over. Always struggling to keep up with his gigantic new wife: miserably champing on low-fat, chocolate- and cheese-free superfoods before dragging himself out for another exhausted scamper in the sweltering heat. But try as he might, he'll never be as tall or young as her. I wonder sometimes whether she's turning out to be quite as much fun as he imagined.

His desperation to come across as the youthful, fit, sexy, medium-height warrior-executive is so acute that last weekend it made him have a funny turn while jogging in the park and fall on his bottom.

I wish there was footage. Maybe he fell into a bin or got tangled with some shrubbery and lost a shoe. Maybe some kids' football strayed into his path and, in trying to pass it back to them, he toed it into his own face, staggered into a duckpond and had an undignified struggle with an angered goose. Maybe he slipped in a dog turd and skated along on it for several yards before falling face-first into a tramp's crotch. Anyway, after a little lie down in a helicopter, he felt better and now he's back to being in charge of France."

Snark or not snark? After all, The Guardian tells us comment is free.

Snark attack on Lily Allen

2009-07-30T15:36:00.005+01:00

Readers of The Mail indulged (yet again) in some good, old-fashioned celebrity bashing last night. After an article called "Lily Allen paints on panda eyes for dinner" readers responded as follows:

"Vile talentless girl"

"She really is the most foul mouthed, awful, poor excuse for a singer i have ever seen - get yourself pulled together and take a long hard look at yourself before blasting every other celeb out there! Disgusting!"

"Maybe she got dressed and put her make-up on in the dark...she's got little talent and only got where she is because of her Dad. I wondered why she only seems to mix with middle aged men before remembering they're all her Dad's mates!"

"She's such a nothing and nobody that she's practically a black hole."

Ouch. Definitely appropriate considering the article was about her choice of makeup.

Sam Leith leads the anti-snark crusade in the Standard

2009-07-28T10:37:00.003+01:00

Sam Leith hit out last night in The Evening Standard at snarky comments directed at Gwyneth Paltrow on the Daily Mail's website. The Mail article, "Veganism is SO last year", implies Paltrow's posting of a video showing her cooking roast chicken is incompatible with her "vegan sensibilities".

Leith is less interested in the story, however, than the "scratchy comments" posted underneath it by readers.

"A clever mechanism lets you see the “rating” of each comment — based on whether other readers have clicked to agree or disagree with the remark, and the handful of charitable comments were voted firmly into the red.

The most unpopular of all was: “I'm not a big fan of Gwyneth Paltrow but well done. It's good to see her doing something she enjoys.”

Top of the pops, instead, were angry vegans and bluenoses affecting horror that she was handling raw meat before making salad (“Great cooking tips if you want samonela !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”) [sic].

The bare judgment “She is so BORING!!” had an approval rating of 306. Not only had someone written this — someone with, presumably, more interesting things to do — but more than 300 people had taken the trouble to put their agreement on the record.

This woman had the temerity — the temerity, look you — to make a video of herself cooking a simple recipe. Then the brass neck to make it available for free to people who want to watch it. How very dare she?

You're boring, Paltrow. I watched your video from beginning to end. Twice. Utter waste of time. And you're unhygienic: I could have got food poisoning if I'd followed your recipe — but I won't, because I don't need you to tell me how to cook chicken, Miss Snootydrawers, and besides I know better than you about food hygiene too, so there. Now I'm bashing furiously away at my keyboard to tell you so.

Baffling. And, alas, a weathervane. We are living in an age of hate: we cross the street to find new things and new people to despise, and get our kicks from despising them in public. Why live a life of your own when you can spend your waking hours hating the lives of people you've never met?"

Antichrist

2009-07-27T17:05:00.004+01:00

It's the film that's dividing critics as we speak. Kevin Maher sees it as "an eerie and discomfiting reflection on our own bestial selves", that is "deftly engineered to disturb". Wendy Ide, however, is less impressed:

"It’s not the horrifying genital mutilation that’s the problem with Von Trier’s latest calculated piece of provocation. Nor is it the unsavoury whiff of misogyny that permeates the film — after all, with Von Trier we’ve been there before. No, the problem lies with the fact that long swathes of this curiously hollow film are so grindingly tedious and emotionally uninvolving. The dialogue is so risible — it sounds like a bad translation of a 1960s Scandinavian play — that you find yourself almost welcoming the scene in which Gainsbourg takes a pair of scissors to her private parts, if only because it gives you something to react to. Von Trier’s imagery is striking, courtesy of the cinematographer Anthony Dod Mantle, but it’s essentially meaningless — a cobbled-together mess of pretentious references, crowned with a talking fox. Von Trier claims that the film was a form of therapy, but the cynical might suggest that it’s not the film-making he finds cathartic but the attention that results afterwards."

Reviewers don't have to like the films they're reviewing. However, is the implied attack on Von Trier at the end a little bit snarky?

Simon Cowell's "caustic wit"

2009-07-21T16:33:00.007+01:00

He claims he's just being honest, but these American Idol insults are pretty nasty:

"You sounded like Cher after she's been to the dentist."

"What do you think we are looking for – a two-year-old who can't sing?"

"You look like one of those creatures that live in the jungle with those massive eyes."

"If you had lived 2,000 years ago and sung like that, I think they would have stoned you."*

However, Denby says snark isn't just about being nasty... Is there an 'insider' aspect to this humour that makes it snark?

When Jeremy Clarkson ridiculed the looks of the CEO of Porsche on Top Gear last Sunday, he was tapping into the 'club' mentality in the studio and that makes his comments snark.

*Taken from The Times

The fine line between parody and snark

2009-07-21T16:18:00.007+01:00

What's the difference between snark and parody? Take The Guardian's Digested Read, talking here on Jeremy Kyle:

"The joy I get from helping little people stand taller is unbounded. That's why I insist midgets have boxes to stand on. And all I can say to the reporter who broke the story of me having phone sex with a 16-year-old girl is: "Where were you when that lonely, lost girl needed affection?" I also deny the show encourages violence, as that idiot judge suggested; sadly we can't get away with that in the morning, but give me a late-night show and watch the fists fly!"

Nasty or humourous? Snark or parody?

Is snark justified in refuting racism?

2009-07-21T16:00:00.007+01:00

Kismet Hardy expressed his anger at Jack Tweed referring to Shilpa Shetty as a 'Paki bitch' in a Pickled Politics blog post in 2007.

"I hate to do this to you. It’s downright dirty of me to urge you to lose precious minutes of your life peering into the intellectual chasm dug out by the pneumatic phrenic drill that is Celebrity Big Brother. Loathed as I am to insult your intelligence, I fear it would be foolish not to consider what is being deemed acceptable in the minds of those less fortunate in the intelligence stakes than those that subscribe to the [PIckled Politics] ethics.

"For those who haven’t had the displeasure of watching that plankton-for-brains Jack referring to Shilpa Shetty as a ‘Paki bitch’, YouTube has the ghastly snippet. While it’s a fact that most of us have grudgingly accepted that we live in a time where ‘outrageous’ behaviour by non-entities is championed over the deeds of the genuinely talented, have we really become so complacent that we’ll allow a television show to get away with showing something that you wouldn’t stand for if you overheard it on the streets?"

Is snark justified in refuting racism?

Miss Snark

2009-07-21T15:48:00.006+01:00

Denby argues snark is ruining our language, but there are some people out there who revel in it. Who, in fact, go so far as to name themselves after the concept. Miss Snark - the literary agent proudly claims to be the site where "Miss Snark vented her wrath on the hapless world of writers and crushed them to sand beneath her T.Rexual heels of stiletto snark."

For example:
"...Miss Snark turns to the slush pile.
Not quite as many crimes against the written form in today's mail.
Some good material in fact. Good, but not good enough.
Not publishable, not marketable..nada."

Should people be proud to name themselves after snark?

The principles of snark

2009-07-17T16:03:00.004+01:00

To equip you better for judging on the snarkiness of the extracts here, we've given you Denby's nine principles of snark.

1. The "Whatever" principle. Attack without reason.
2. The White Man's Last Stand Principle. Appeal to common, hackneyed prejudices, the more common and hackneyed the better. But disguise the appeal a little, if you can.
3. The Pawnshop Principle. Reach into the rotting heap of media referents for old jokes, old insults, and give them a twist.
4. The Throw-Some-Mud Principle. Assume anything negative said about someone with power is true - or at least usable.
5. The Reckless Disregard Principle. Ignore the routine responsibilities of journalism. The more flagrantly you ignore them, the better.
6. The Hobbyhorse Principle. Reduce all human complexity to caricature. Then repeat the caricature.
7. The You-Suck Principle. Grab hold of celebrities in an attitude of adoration and loathing; first adoration, then loathing.
8. The Pacemaker Principle. Attack the old. Your editors and Web publishers want young demographics, so they won't mind.
9. The Gastronomic Principle. Attack expensive, underperforming restaurants. (This is the only circumstance where Denby believes snark is justified.)

Happy judging.

Can snark and sympathy go together?

2009-07-17T15:27:00.009+01:00

One of the qualities of snark is how it can hide itself. As Denby says, it's a sneaky, snide, teasing form of abuse. Alan Carr's comments on Madonna, made in a recent interview for the Sun, cleverly combine insult with apparent compassion.

"She must have awful wind on the macrobiotic diets.
You see her on stage bending into these funny positions and she must be parping away – no wonder her dancers look so miserable.
It's such a shame, isn't it? Her face looks pretty but the veins... it's like the M6 all down her arm. When I watched her film In Bed With Madonna she's effing and blinding and is good fun. She seems to have changed so much."

Is Carr guilty of genuine feeling, or is it a ploy to mask the snark?

The Daily Mail's Melanie Phillips on Harriet Harman's "equality maniacs" - is snark a political issue?

2009-07-17T15:17:00.008+01:00

In his book, David Denby distinguishes between "harshly funny satirical writing" and snark. However, does this dichotomy rely on our perception of whether the satire is justified? For example, a judgement on the snarkiness of Phillips' comments on Harriet Harman, taken from a recent Daily Mail article, might depend on whether we agree with her politics.

"Has there ever been a more preposterous figure than the Equalities Minister Harriet Harman?…
…Not content with setting herself to eradicate discrimination against women, gays, lesbians, bisexuals, transgendered, disabled or black people as well as all ethnic minorities, she has now discovered yet another form of prejudice - discrimination against Northerners…
…After 'class war', we now apparently have 'location war'. If this idea is allowed to progress beyond Ms Harperson's terrifyingly one-track mind, hundreds of public organisations will have to have special quotas for Yorkshirepersons or Cornishpersons whenever a vacancy occurs.
Could Ms Harman perhaps enlighten us whether it would be merely those currently living in such areas who would be preferred - or everyone with a regional accent, perhaps, or ancestors from Tyneside or the Wirral?"

Is snark a political issue?

The Daily Record refuses to publish Frankie Boyle's snarky MJ jokes

2009-07-17T14:54:00.014+01:00

Frankie Boyle has quit his job at Scottish tabloid Daily Record after the paper refused to publish his Michael Jackson jokes. His bosses clearly thought the article - with references to Jackson's rumoured paedophilia - was offensive and unacceptable.

"We can all learn something from Michael’s life. For example, it looks like oxygen tents are a big waste of money.
Why did no one pick up on it when he had shown all the signs of a heart attack? Wheezing noises, jerking of the arms, ashen complexion? I suppose to be fair he has been showing all those symptoms since the mid eighties. Had Jackson’s staff noticed something was wrong earlier he might have been saved, but when they saw him grab his left arm, go stiff and yelp they just thought he was practising his moves for Beat It...
...I was a big Michael Jackson fan when I was 8. I didn't know it at the time, but I was his 'type.'
For his London concerts Michael Jackson advertised for children in wheelchairs or with missing legs! What parent would agree to that? Look what happened with kids who could run away! Those tickets sold out in minutes. An interesting attitude we have to paedophilia in this country, 'We don’t want paedophiles round here! Unless they’ve really worked on their choreography...'"

Frankie Boyle summed up his view of the situation to his website viewers:

"Oh dear. Had to quit my Daily Record column over a moral disagreement. We disagreed over whether it was ok to make jokes about a dead child molestor. Here is the whole column, big love my niggers."

Alain de Botton hits out at reviewer - but is this really snark?

2009-07-15T17:21:00.007+01:00

Alain de Botton caused quite a stir in June when he hit back at a poor review of his new book, The Pleasures and Sorrows of work, with 'snarky' comments. Angry with the reviewer, Caleb Crain, he posted angry and abusive messages on Crain's blog, Steamboats are Ruining Everything.

"Caleb, you make it sound on your blog that your review is somehow a sane and fair assessment. In my eyes, and all those who have read it with anything like impartiality, it is a review driven by an almost manic desire to bad-mouth and perversely depreciate anything of value. The accusations you level at me are simply extraordinary. I genuinely hope that you will find yourself on the receiving end of such a daft review some time very soon - so that you can grow up and start to take some responsibility for your work as a reviewer. You have now killed my book in the United States, nothing short of that. So that's two years of work down the drain in one miserable 900 word review. You present yourself as 'nice' in this blog (so much talk about your boyfriend, the dog etc). It's only fair for your readers (nice people like Joe Linker and trusting souls like PAB) to get a whiff that the truth may be more complex. I will hate you till the day I die and wish you nothing but ill will in every career move you make. I will be watching with interest and schadenfreude."*

He didn't leave it there, either. After a de Botton fan had posted back, berating him for his lack of "maturity and insight", he responded as follows:

"The reason I was led to respond to this review - and I have never done something like this before - is the sheer vindictive lunacy of the accusations levelled against me. My response may seem deranged, but only if you hold in mind two things: the book I've written and what the reviewer said about it. The gap is so large that this goes way beyond a casual and quite understandable case of a reviewer not liking a book. Everyone is allowed their own taste and I'd be the last person to force a consensus. However, there's a point at which a review becomes so angry, cruel and mean-spirited that perspective just disappears and one is into new and uncharted terrain. I'm responding to this review as a way of proposing that forgiveness is perhaps not always the only option when the provocation has been enormous."*

Are de Botton's posts a simple case of snark? The personal attack at Crain - "I will hate you till the day I die" - suggests so. Or, are they a justified defence of de Botton's book in light of the "new and uncharted terrain" Crain's "angry, cruel and mean-spirited" review has created?

*Reproduced from Caleb Crain's blog, Steamboats are Ruining Everything.

Author offers apologies over Twitter'd review backlash

2009-07-03T11:36:00.000+01:00

An author has apologised after using her Twitter account to call on her fans to hit back at "snarky critics". Alice Hoffman used Twitter to strike back at a mixed review of her latest novel The Story Sisters. According to the New York Times, Hoffman described critic Roberta Silman of the Boston Globe as "a moron", after she wrote that her new novel lacked the spark of an earlier work.

Hoffman has now deleted her Twitter account, and in a statement forwarded by her publisher, the Crown Publishing Group division of Random House, said: "I feel this whole situation has been completely blown out of proportion. Of course, I was dismayed by Roberta Silman’s review which gave away the plot of the novel, and in the heat of the moment I responded strongly and I wish I hadn’t. I’m sorry if I offended anyone."

Read more

2009-06-19T16:55:00.001+01:00

Jeremy Clarkson on the demise of Woolworths

2009-06-19T16:52:00.001+01:00

If we form an emotional attachment to every single thing that comes into our lives, pretty soon the whole country will become clogged up with stuff that doesn’t work any more.

Woolworths was a classic case in point. When it went out of business, everyone ran around saying it should be saved because it was “traditional”. No it wasn’t. It was a terrible shop, selling awful things that even ghastly people didn’t want to buy. Woolworths was useful only for sheltering from a second world war bombing raid.