Those Unlimited Minutes Must Have Come Through 2

Maureen Dowd has long demonstrated that, in a conflict between snark and fact in her world, snark wins every time.

I think I’ve managed to finish one of her columns.

Now comes the dissection of today’s column: Brendan makes a lot of phone calls in researching various claims in Maureen Dowd’s lame column today. (There’s a call for every linked word.)

Brendan summarizes.

Duncan has the tag line.

Coda: Brendan gets an email. And answers it.

(I am really glad I queued this post for later tonight, so I could keep updating it so as to tell The Rest Of The Story.)

Aside: I’ve heard David Denby, the author of the book linked in the first line, interviewed several times. He gives a good interview and seems a most charming man. I think I get what he’s trying to say, but, when he tries to draw a line between sarcasm and snark, it’s like he’s trying to swim in melted peanut butter.

As near as I can figure, he differentiates between snark and sarcasm by defining snark as nastiness for nastiness’s sake–getting laughs by inflicting hurt–and sarcasm as nastiness to make a legitimate point–getting laughs by inflicting pain while adding a new point to the argument. But it’s awfully muddled.