Snark

by hilzoy

OK, I had a moment of snark, which has fortunately passed. (Long day.) As penance, I present more and better snark, by other, better writers. First, here is a thread from Crooked Timber on academic put-downs. Examples:

• “This book fills a needed gap in the literature.”
• "When pygmies cast such long shadows, it must be very late in the day indeed." (Francis Crick)
• “His mind is like a rice paddy: miles and miles of shimmering water—one inch deep.”
• A professor writing on a grad student’s paper: You have reinvented the sled. Asked to clarify, the prof said: It’s much like reinventing the wheel, but less useful.

Also on Crooked Timber, you can see what dreadful sentence prompted Kieran Healy to write:

"Tom Friedman is a God. No, not a God so much as a moustachioed force of nature, pumped up on the steroids of globalization, a canary in the coalmine of an interconnected era whose tentacles are spreading over the face of a New Economy savannah where old lions are left standing at their waterholes, unaware that the young Turks—and Indians—have both hands on the wheel of fortune favors the brave face the music to their ears to the, uh, ground."

Finally, a theological post (old, but new to me) from Slacktivist:

" "Steve" has emerged as a central figure in American theology. He even played a significant role in the recent national elections. Yet despite his enormous influence, we know little about Steve aside from a single reference to him in our holy texts. This reference is, like the catechism, extra-canonical but considered authoritative:

"God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve."

This oft-quoted text presents a mystery. If God did not make Steve, then where did this uncreature come from? How did Steve come to be?

God did not make Steve, therefore we must also assume that Steve was never born. If Steve had been born, after all, then he would be "begotten, not made." Surely we are not meant to conclude that Steve is a little-known fourth member of the Trinity.

Thus again we come to mystery. Steve was neither made nor begotten; yet Steve is.

What can we do in the face of such mystery? It is beyond our ken. We cannot hope to understand, we can only drop to our knees to sing a bewildered hymn of praise to the Creator of all things except Steve."

Done!

Comments

[notyou]

Not precisely on topic, but that first one reminded me of a line about marriage said by Chris Elliot in There's Something About Mary: "Each day is better than the next."

[Slartibartfast]

Simple. Steve is a construct of Satan.

Next?

[Happy Jack]

Who's ken, is he "made or begotten", and does all knowledge reside just this side of him?

[CaseyL]

Ah. So God made Adam, a hairy graceless nincompoop who spent his days sitting around naming things while Eve did the hunting/gathering/cooking/serving/cleaning up - and who, when he got in trouble for eating Unauthorized Fruit (interpret that as you will :), blamed Eve.

And Satan made... Steve: sleek and not hirsute, sensuous and not grotty, adventurous and not mindlessly obedient; well groomed and cosmopolitan and one hell of a dancer.

Thanks, Slart. That explains *so* much.

[sidereal]

Steve is Cain's wife's brother.

[Katherine]

Satan also made Don Henley.

(did anyone else see the Daily Show? Let's just say, the new Pope is not infallible when it comes to "rock and/or roll")

[NeoDude]

best post, ever!

[rilkefan]

I was going to cut-and-paste a wonderful poem by John Hollander about Adam naming the beasts, but I googled it and the first full quote was from my comment on this hilzoy post...

[liberal japonicus]

Sorry, this isn't an academic put down, but funny because the guy thought it was a compliment. A certain manager had the nickname of the "juggler", which he thought was a tribute to his ability to multi-task, but everyone else said that it was because any project he took on immediately became 'balls up'.

[otmar]

The most negative book-review I ever read contained the phrase: "This book isn't worth the air it displaces".

[John Thullen]

I'm taking all of this personally.

[Tad Brennan]

It seems to me quite plausible, on paleographical grounds, that the original text read "Adam and Steve", and that later readers, on the look-out for saints, mis-divided the text into "Adam and St. Eve". After scratching their heads for awhile and wondering what sort of name "Eve" might be, they eventually grew used to it.

(I remember asking a local in a small town in France to tell me more about the dedicatee of the church in the central square. "St. Urban?" he said quizzically, "St. Urban? 'Sais pas, moi. C'est lui qui a inventee le chapeau?" Misdivision leads to misprision).

[votermom]

I thank God, and hilzoy, who may or may not be the same entity, for this thread. Laughter is good.

[Slartibartfast]

Thanks, Slart. That explains *so* much.

Always glad to be of service. And I mean that in a way that entirely precludes anything relating to animal husbandry.

[Bernard Yomtov]

Some favorites:

"Wagner's music is much better than it sounds."

--Mark Twain

Letter from a composer to a critic:

"I am sitting in the smallest room in my house. I have your review in front of me. Soon it will be behind me."

[Dantheman]

Others of my favorites:

"I love Wagner, but the music I prefer is that of a cat, hanging outside a window, trying to hold on to the panes of glass with his claws."

Baudelaire

"(William Jennings Bryan's) mind is like a soup dish, wide and shallow. It can hold a small amount of virtually anything, but the slightest jarring spilled the soup into someone's lap."

(I don't recall the author)

[Macallan]

One of my favs –

This work is so shoddy it doesn't yet reach the standards necessary to be simply wrong.

Or it's more colloquial variant –

That's so stupid it isn't even wrong.

[sidereal]

A classic from that cinematic tour de force, Billy Madison:

"Principal: Mr. Madison, what you've just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul"

[Katherine]

Mac--I prefer the "this isn't right. This isn't even wrong" version of that one.

Here's the rare put-down of yourself:

Dobson said the beating he took in the media, coming after his appearance on the cover of newsmagazines hailing his prominence in Bush's reelection, proved that the press will only seek to tear him down.

"This will not be the last thing that you read about that makes me look ridiculous," he said.

Wise words, Reverend. Wise words.

[Katherine]

Mark Twain on James Fenimore Cooper is also classic.

[notyou]

B. Disraeli in response to unsolicited manuscript from an aspiring writer: "Many thanks; I shall lose no time in reading it."

[Linnet]

Dorothy Parker, in a book review: "This is not a book to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown aside with great force."

[ral]

A more recent example, Dahlia Lithwick's review of Men in Black:

I use the word "book" with some hesitation: Certainly it possesses chapters and words and other book-like accoutrements. But Men in Black is 208 large-print pages of mostly block quotes (from court decisions or other legal thinkers) padded with a foreword by the eminent legal scholar Rush Limbaugh, and a blurry 10-page "Appendix" of internal memos to and from congressional Democrats—stolen during Memogate. The reason it may take you only slightly longer to read Men in Black than it took Levin to write it is that you'll experience an overwhelming urge to shower between chapters.