POUILLY FUISSEE
HO^JE NA VITROLA
BACH
VIVALDI
SOH CACARECOS
DE DEIXE A MUHSICA TER O CONTROLE
DE ALLONS ENFANTS
DE LA PATRIE
FALTA HUMANIZAR
SOCIALIZAR
ESPINAFRES
LE BEAUJOLAIS NUVEAU EST ARRIVE^
FENNEL
CELERY
COLORADO
FRANCE
CAFÉ
PIRUH
PA~O FRESCO
RAMSAY
WARM
ORGANIC
“Todas as coisas humanas têm dois aspectos… para dizer a verdade todo este mundo não é senão uma sombra e uma aparência; mas esta grande e interminável comédia não pode representar-se de um outro modo. Tudo na vida é tão obscuro, tão diverso, tão oposto, que não podemos nos assegurar de nenhuma verdade.” Erasmo – Elogio da Loucura, 1509
A COZINHA ALEMA~
KENJIH
HII
KEN
MISTER
JOHN
BIG FUN
LET THE BEAT HIT
INNER CITY
I JUST LOVE
INNER CITY
WRE HAVING
A BIG FUN
TRUST ME
DARLING
TINTAS
E
FIOS
SANTA CATARINA INUNDAHDA
PAVIOS
LOOKS
PLIHNIO
QUE PORTE
DO RAPAZ
DOREI
O SERVIÇO
LINDO
O TAL
DO RAPAIZ
BIH
NEM TE CONTO
AH
MELHOR NA~O
CONTAR
MELHOR NEM IMAGINAR
O QUE VEM
DEPOIS
LINDO
BEM
F
B
I
DE
C
I
A
EH
LINDO
QUASE DESMAIEI
QUANDO VIH
ACHEI MELHOR
NA~O DIZER NAHDA
FAZER O QUE^
E^LE EH LINDO
POSSO
FALAR
HUM TIPO
RIDIHCULO
DE
LINDO
SAHBE
MANGA NO PEH
ELEMENTOS
BABYHS
SEAFOOD
POULET
CALVADOS
PA~O
VINAGRE
QUEIJOS ESPANHOIS DAS ASTURIAS
COCKTAIL
BRANDY
LONG ISLAND
SWEET POTOTOES
SQUASH
DE BIQUUINI
MANTEIGA
LOCALIZANDO MEU IMPERADOR
DO RIO
EM
G
P
S
TE ACHEI
XUXUH
EU TO^ CHEGANDO
NUTS
ARTESANAL
TV
OBESIDADE
GRAVE
LUXURY
NORMANDIA
FIGOS
CARAWAY
SAVOY CABBAGE
BROWN
ORANGES
SAVORY
SALMON
GARLIC
CRAMBERRIES
MARKET
MAÇAS
SCRETCHING
BLACK PEPPER
TRUFAS
CASTANHAS PORTUGUESAS
TOMILHO
MOUSSELINE
BATATAS
SALVIA
GENGIBRE
ZEST
DILL
PIQUILLO PEPPER
ROLLS
FRANK BRUNI
FAIZ DE CONTA QUE NAHDA ACONTECEU
RELAX
BIG FUN
KEN
SUMMER
GLAMURAMA
QUE LINDA
MARY WEYKERT
AY
QUE LINDA
LUCIANA CURTIS
TAMBEM VIH
AI
QUE LINDAS
TAMBEM LORENZO MERLINNO
TAH BEM TAMBEM
EH
TAH BEM
TAMBEM
KEN
PICTURES
TAMBEM VIH
LINDAS AS FOHTOS
KEY
KO
KEN
PARABENS
FIELDS
LIKE
FINDS
HUM CHEIRINHO DE CAFEH
AQUIH EM MARTE
NESPRESSO
SUCO DE ROMA~
CROQUETAS
TABLE
STARS
BOBOH
DOWNTOWN
SANDWICHES
VERSSAILLES
GRAPES
PRAZERES
MESAS
CULTURA
NEGOHCIOS
GERENCIAMENTO
GESTOR
EDUCAÇA~O
SAUDE
ESPORTES
OPINIO~ES
ARTE
ESTILO
VIAHGEM
TRABALHO
CUIDADO
PISCOLOGIA
SAUDE
ADMINISTRAÇA~O
LINGUAHGEM
TV
RECEITAS
MEHTODOS
VINHOS REPUTAHDOS
E
PASSARINHOS
CHAMPAGNE
AMORAS
PERFECT AMOUR
HOME
GARDEN
WEDDINGS
CELEBRATIONS
Traditional cafes and bars all over France are suffering and in some cases even closing, hit by changing attitudes, habits and now a poor economic climate.
O TEATRO
RECONHECIDO
LOVE
JOBS
FILLINTO
CHERRYH
DOREI TE VER
CE6 ME PARECEU
OHTIMO
DOREI TE VER
MARIZA
DA HORTA
ADORO MARIZA ORTH
DOREI TE VER
SORRY DARLING
QUANDO ENCONTRO
FILLINTO
SOH NEGOHCIOS
ADORAMOS
NEGOHCIOS
TEMOS ISSO EM COMUM
NEGOHCIOS
LUCIANA CURTIS
MARY WEICKERT
DUAS LINDAS
MAIS HUMA INDIA QUE ME QUASE ME OCORREU ME
CHERRY
QUASE DESMAIEI
SABE
DIO TIPO LINDA
401
K
CHOCOLATE
ABOHBORA
COM TOHQUES EM DE CO^CO VERDE
DE DESMAIAR
DE LINDA
By ANDY NEWMAN
Published: November 21, 2008
PITY poor irony. Declared dead after 9/11, it staged a strong rally beneath a “Mission Accomplished” banner, only to find itself in mortal danger once again.
Multimedia
Graphic
Of Course, There’s No Way to Chart ‘Irony’
Enlarge This Image
Peter Foley
HOPE FOR IRONY? Joan Didion, with Andrew Delbanco, at a talk.
Its ill health was noted by, among others, no less an ironist than Joan Didion, the nation’s poet laureate of disillusion. The week after the election, in a talk at the New York Public Library, Ms. Didion lamented that the United States in the era of Barack Obama had become an “irony-free zone,” a vast Kool-Aid tank where “naïveté, translated into ‘hope,’ was now in” and where “innocence, even when it looked like ignorance, was now prized.”
Who’d want to live in a world like that?
But are ironic sensibilities like Ms. Didion’s — the detachment of mind, the appreciation of the folly of taking things at face value — really disappearing?
Not according to the conservative humorist P. J. O’Rourke, who reported from his New Hampshire office on Wednesday that he was finishing a piece for The Weekly Standard with the working title, “Is It Too Soon to Start Talking About the Failed Obama Presidency Just Because He Isn’t President Yet?”
Not according to the thin black novelist Colson Whitehead, who wrote an Op-Ed in The New York Times under the headline, “Finally, a Thin President.”
“Something bad happens, like 9/11, it’s the death of irony,” Mr. Whitehead said in an e-mail message on Thursday. “Something good happens, like Obama’s win, it’s the death of irony. When will someone proclaim the death of iceberg lettuce? I’m sick of it making my salads boring.”
To be sure, President-elect, you’re no 9/11. Back then, irony seemed, for a time, impossible. Nowadays, Ms. Didion said in her talk, which will be published Monday in The New York Review of Books, it is simply “not the preferred way” of viewing events.
Mr. O’Rourke, for his part, said that Mr. Change himself, with his choices of usual suspects and Beltway insiders to help him run the country, was proving no slouch in the irony department.
But Ms. Didion might be on to something. A Nexis search found that the incidence of the words “irony,” “ironic” and “ironically” in major American newspapers during the two-week period beginning Nov. 6 slipped 19 percent from the same period last year.
In New York, Ms. Didion’s home city, irony has been steadily disappearing from daily newspapers for a decade, the analysis found. In those same two-week November periods from 2000 to 2008, appearances of “irony” and its cognates tumbled 56 percent. Some of the drop seems to be because of the shrinking of newspapers, but a similar Nexis search with a control word, “went,” showed a drop of only 32 percent, leaving an irony gap of 24 percentage points.
WIFE HO^JE
QUUEH FIHGADO
HUM
ADORO FIHGADO
The analysis may have its flaws. For one thing, the search algorithm also, ironically, picked up phrases like “end of irony.” More significantly, no self-respecting ironist actually uses the word “ironic,” except, perhaps, ironically.
Still, there is little doubt that these are challenging times for the professionally arch. Gilbert Gottfried, widely credited with being the first standup comic to tell a 9/11 joke (he complained 18 days after the attacks that he couldn’t get a direct flight to California because “they said they have to stop at the Empire State Building first”), noted that his gun-shy colleagues, afraid of spoiling the love fest or being accused of racism, “continue to do Sarah Palin insults, and that really struck me as odd.”
THE ONION, whose less-than-half-joking postelection headline read something like “Nation Finally Lousy Enough to Make Social Progress,” seems to be having trouble finding its bearings, too. Even a gentle, somewhat toothless Nov. 11 article, “International Con Man Barack Obama Leaves U.S. With $85 Million in Campaign Fund-Raising,” drew criticism on discussion boards for feeding into stereotypes about blacks, said The Onion’s editor, Joe Randazzo.
“After eight years of the Bush administration, where irony was almost a measure of desperation — maybe now that people have seen something happen they never thought possible, their sarcasm processors have kind of gone into shock,” he said.
Officials at “Saturday Night Live” declined to comment for this article. “We have been trying to avoid these ‘what now’ stories,” the show’s spokesman, Marc Liepis, said in an e-mail message.
Some sometime cynics bristled at the suggestion that they had gone soft or lost their edge. “To me, it’s a false choice to say we’re either going to be running our own little ‘Daily Show’ of the mind 24/7 or we’re going to be completely earnest,” said Kurt Andersen, the novelist, Spy magazine co-founder and author of a 3,500-word New York magazine mash note to the president-elect and the people who voted for him. “One can maintain one’s ironic armor and arsenal where one needs it.”
Roger Rosenblatt, the former Time columnist who wrote that Sept. 11 might at least “spell the end of the age of irony,” said that while irony had its place and time, this was not it.
“Irony,” Mr. Rosenblatt said, “is a diminishing act — the incongruity between what’s expected and what occurs makes us smile at the distance. But there are some events that occur, like 9/11, and perhaps Obama, though I didn’t think of him in this context, that are so big that they almost imply an obligation not to diminish it by clever comparisons.”
John H. McWhorter, the semiconservative black commentator and senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, said that the orgy of self-congratulation he saw among whites was an understandable and even sort of defensible response to the expiation of white America’s sins that Mr. Obama’s ascendance enabled. “When you vote for Obama,” he said, “you are showing that you are past the nastiness, and that’s a natural feeling and a healthy feeling for white people to have.”
But it is at times like these, Ms. Didion seemed to argue, when a distanced perspective is needed most. (Not that she was willing to elaborate on her talk. “Basically,” she said on the phone Tuesday, “I don’t like to talk about anything I’ve written or that I’m writing. What you write down, there it is and you’ve done it.”)
Mr. Randazzo of The Onion promised that irony would make a speedy recovery. “This isn’t the end of history,” he said, invoking another famous wrong prediction. “We never know what will be the next dumb thing to satirize — that’s the beauty of the thing.”
Khachaturian
A ESPANHA
ACHEI SE^CO
PATA NE^GRA
CARNE MOIHDA
FEIJA~O PRETO
SOJA
PUTANESCA
ITALIA
BAIHA
FRANCIS FORD COPPOLA
COLHERES
PESOS
MEDIDAS
LINEARES
LIHQUIDAS
PA~O
ERVAS
THE LOVE I LOST
TEMPERATURAS
ALIMENTOS
MARCELO KATSUKI
NOTIHCIAS DA TERRA
CINEASTA
PERFUMES
NOTEBOOK
SMARTPHONE
CARROS DIGITAIS
PRAÇA
ADEGA
TRANCOSO
TRANCANDO
VIRAHDO
EM
BEM
EU TO^DO DE
WILSON RANIERE
AI SORRY
DARLING
NA~O TE^VE QUEM NA~O REPARASSE
WAL;ERIO ARAUJO
FERNANDO PIRES
O OUSADO
SAPATEIRO
ABUZADO O RAPAZ
VIROU O SAPATEIRO
DO MEU HUMILDE TEMPO
DE SHORT
FERNANDO PIRES
ADORO
FERNANDO PIRES
SEI LAH BIIS
YEZ BRAZIL
MR WONDERFULL
ONDE PARAMOS MESMO
AI QUE LOUCA
EH
MARTE
FRED AND AFRICANS DIVAS
DOIDA
VIAHDO
E B
ALL FALLS DOWN
HO^JE ACORDEI VIRGEM
AQUIH
EM MARTE
VIRGEM (23 ago. a 22 set.)
Mente profunda e poder de observação aguda são trunfos num dia em que o astral o impele a descobrir o que anda acontecendo na vida doméstica e familiar. Assuntos ligados a parentes e a pessoas mais vividas em alta. Importante se conectar com os seus valores. Dissemine a esperança.
MAIS VIHDEOS
TWO WORDS
PEACE
LOVE
FREEWAY
COOL
DROP
LOVE CAN CHANGE IT
COLLOR ME DANNY
FRANCK KNUKCLES
FEAT
ADEVA
RESTAURANTES
VINHOS
BEBIDAS
LER
ESCREVER
ESTUDAR
PESQUIZAR
AGITAR
A CULTURA
AQUIH EM MARTE
DIREHTO
DE
MARTE
DE
BIQUINI
WAX
DO IT
AGAIN
TAHTY
SDUTORA
NATURAL
PERDIH RELATOS PRECIO^SOS
RICA
INFLUENTE
CHIC
BETH
BRASIL
BASIL
FRANCE
HAM
TAMO MESMO
ONDE
AHHHH
YEZ
MARTE
EH
CHERRYH
TE VIH
LORENZO MERLINO
AI
ADORO O TRABALHO DE^LE
ATIHPICO
MARIO QUEIROZ
JEZIEL MORAES
VROM
TANTOS NOMES
KANYE WEST
EH
KANYE WEST
NO SOM AGORA
TALKING ABOUT
WORKING OUT
THE PLAN
FREKING OUT
FROM ALABAMA
POUR GIRL
FROM
ALABAMA
DUAS PALAVRAS
DROP
OUT
SISTEM
MOUVE
MUHVE
THE COLLEGE
INDEPENDENCIA
AOS QUATORZE
ADEQUADO
RESPONSAHVEL
HABILITAHDO
Chef à domicile, un métier en vogue. Isabelle Perrin, alias LaChwette, est chef à domicile depuis quatre ans. De la liste des courses au dressage de la table, en passant par la location de la vaisselle, cette jeune trentenaire prend la commande des fourneaux de ses clients pour leur proposer une prestation sur mesure. Reportage auprès d’une ‘épicurieuse’ toquée. Lire la suite...
OR
NOT
VOÇE^ DECIDE
DRIVE SLOW
BABY
MAKE NO SENCE
OH BABY
MAKE NO SENCE
ADDICTION
PAULO MARTINEZ NUM
PALETOH
BEM
APANHADO
CARTE BLANCHE
Falling
Erics fallen angel mix
Peyton
SHORTS
IN
DIAMONDS
FROM SERRA LEO^A
JAY
Z
REMIX
CONFLICT
PROUND
THE FACT
EVER
EVER
EVER
LATE
LATE
HERE
WALK
WEEK
SLLEEP
BUSINESS
PESSOAL DO MAVC
A FESTA DA NOSSA SENHORA DA BOA VIAGEM SERÁ REALIZADA NO DIA 05, 06 E 07 DE _DEZEMBRO DE 2008.
O MOVIMENTO ÁGUA VIVA CASAIS FICOU RESPONSÁVEL EM TRABALHAR NO SÁBADO, DIA _06 DE DEZEMBRO. DESTA FORMA PRECISAMOS DA CONFIRMAÇÃO DOS NOMES DOS MEMBROS _DO MAVC, QUE AINDA NÃO CONFIRMARAM, PARA TRABALHAR NA COZINHA JUNTAMENTE COM _A DONA BONECA E O SR. OSMARINO.
LEMBRAMOS QUE HAVERÁ MUITO TRABALHO A SER REALIZADO, POR ISSO CONTAMOS COM A _COLABORAÇÃO DE TODOS.
VAMOS LÁ PESSOAL, CONFIRMEM SEUS NOMES! É SÓ UM DIA E ALÉM DISSO IRÁ SER _MAIS UM MOTIVO PARA ESTARMOS JUNTOS TRABALHANDO E DANDO BOAS RISADAS.
CERTOS DE CONTARMOS COM O APOIO DE TODOS, AGRADECEMOS ANTECIPADAMENTE,
COORDENAÇÃO-GERAL MAVC
GOOD NIGHT
YOU
YOU
YOU
MEKANIK
PURSUITE OF HAPPINESS
ILL BE THERE
WEEKEND PLAYERS
TELL ME
UAI
PLAYERS
SO FAR
A TASTE OF SUMMER
AI QUE OHDIO
EU TAMBEM
ME SURPREENDIH
ITS GONNA HAPPEN
BRAND
NEW
DAY
DE
SUNSHINE
LINDO
HIHGGER
EH
DE
MAIS ALTO
HYPNOTYZAHDO
SEBASTIEN LEGER
SO CRAZY
FEEL LOVE
JOY MALCON
LOVE
TO
FEEL
HOUSE BROS
SET YOU FREE
SET YOU FFREE
WATH YOU FEEL
MY FRIEND KEN
KEYKO
FOREVER
TOGETER
FUNK LOVE
BORN TO FUNK
DEEP GRROOUVE
MOTO BLANCO
SHINE REMIX
ONE WORLD
ONE LOVE
EXTENTIDO
GUILTY
FEEL LIKE
DANCING
EV
CHERRY
PRAH MADDONA
QUERO HUMA FRANJA E^MO DESFIAHDA NAS PONTAS
TO^DA PINTADA DE ONÇAS
BODY LANGUAGE
AQUIH EM MARTE
MUITO
BODY
AND
LANGUAGE
CHERRY
SORRY
TO DISTURB YOU
BIG FUN
Créatif, inventif et doté d’un goût certain pour la cuisine, le métier de cuisinier est peut-être fait pour vous. À condition toutefois, de ne pas être effrayé par une cadence de travail soutenue, d’être méthodique, organisé, et de savoir faire preuve de rapidité d'exécution en particulier au moment du coup de feu du service. Pour tout savoir sur ce métier de passionné découvrez notre fiche métier et le témoignage vidéo d’Olivier, cuisinier à l’Orangerie. Lire la suite...
DONS
SUMMER
PARTY
BIG FUN
EXPENSIVE
DE
HIGHT MAINTENANCE
OFICIALIZADO
O HOMEM
INDEPENDENTE
I MEAN
MEANING
DIRETO
ASSIM
PRESENTE
H
AND
M
TEMPO
ALEXANDRE NEGRA~O
APARECEU
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NUM LOOK
WHITE
SWATCH
FO^FO
BRIGADO PE^LA VISITA
TRIBUTE TO FELA
Pink
GOD IS A DJ
PRIMEIRA ESCOLHA
POUILLY FUISSEE
LOVE TANG
SHARA NELSON
AFTER YOU
ANDERSON SOARES
GALANTE
O PLIHNIO
LOS ANGELES
FAHBULA AMERICANA
MISSING YOU
ELEGA^NCIA
E
QUALIDADE
BIBLIOTECA NACIONAL
AQUIH VOU EU
HO^JE NA VITROLA
BACH
VIVALDI
SOH CACARECOS
DE DEIXE A MUHSICA TER O CONTROLE
DE ALLONS ENFANTS
DE LA PATRIE
FALTA HUMANIZAR
SOCIALIZAR
ESPINAFRES
LE BEAUJOLAIS NUVEAU EST ARRIVE^
FENNEL
CELERY
COLORADO
FRANCE
CAFÉ
PIRUH
PA~O FRESCO
RAMSAY
WARM
ORGANIC
“Todas as coisas humanas têm dois aspectos… para dizer a verdade todo este mundo não é senão uma sombra e uma aparência; mas esta grande e interminável comédia não pode representar-se de um outro modo. Tudo na vida é tão obscuro, tão diverso, tão oposto, que não podemos nos assegurar de nenhuma verdade.” Erasmo – Elogio da Loucura, 1509
A COZINHA ALEMA~
KENJIH
HII
KEN
MISTER
JOHN
BIG FUN
LET THE BEAT HIT
INNER CITY
I JUST LOVE
INNER CITY
WRE HAVING
A BIG FUN
TRUST ME
DARLING
TINTAS
E
FIOS
SANTA CATARINA INUNDAHDA
PAVIOS
LOOKS
PLIHNIO
QUE PORTE
DO RAPAZ
DOREI
O SERVIÇO
LINDO
O TAL
DO RAPAIZ
BIH
NEM TE CONTO
AH
MELHOR NA~O
CONTAR
MELHOR NEM IMAGINAR
O QUE VEM
DEPOIS
LINDO
BEM
F
B
I
DE
C
I
A
EH
LINDO
QUASE DESMAIEI
QUANDO VIH
ACHEI MELHOR
NA~O DIZER NAHDA
FAZER O QUE^
E^LE EH LINDO
POSSO
FALAR
HUM TIPO
RIDIHCULO
DE
LINDO
SAHBE
MANGA NO PEH
ELEMENTOS
BABYHS
SEAFOOD
POULET
CALVADOS
PA~O
VINAGRE
QUEIJOS ESPANHOIS DAS ASTURIAS
COCKTAIL
BRANDY
LONG ISLAND
SWEET POTOTOES
SQUASH
DE BIQUUINI
MANTEIGA
LOCALIZANDO MEU IMPERADOR
DO RIO
EM
G
P
S
TE ACHEI
XUXUH
EU TO^ CHEGANDO
NUTS
ARTESANAL
TV
OBESIDADE
GRAVE
LUXURY
NORMANDIA
FIGOS
CARAWAY
SAVOY CABBAGE
BROWN
ORANGES
SAVORY
SALMON
GARLIC
CRAMBERRIES
MARKET
MAÇAS
SCRETCHING
BLACK PEPPER
TRUFAS
CASTANHAS PORTUGUESAS
TOMILHO
MOUSSELINE
BATATAS
SALVIA
GENGIBRE
ZEST
DILL
PIQUILLO PEPPER
ROLLS
FRANK BRUNI
FAIZ DE CONTA QUE NAHDA ACONTECEU
RELAX
BIG FUN
KEN
SUMMER
GLAMURAMA
QUE LINDA
MARY WEYKERT
AY
QUE LINDA
LUCIANA CURTIS
TAMBEM VIH
AI
QUE LINDAS
TAMBEM LORENZO MERLINNO
TAH BEM TAMBEM
EH
TAH BEM
TAMBEM
KEN
PICTURES
TAMBEM VIH
LINDAS AS FOHTOS
KEY
KO
KEN
PARABENS
FIELDS
LIKE
FINDS
HUM CHEIRINHO DE CAFEH
AQUIH EM MARTE
NESPRESSO
SUCO DE ROMA~
CROQUETAS
TABLE
STARS
BOBOH
DOWNTOWN
SANDWICHES
VERSSAILLES
GRAPES
PRAZERES
MESAS
CULTURA
NEGOHCIOS
GERENCIAMENTO
GESTOR
EDUCAÇA~O
SAUDE
ESPORTES
OPINIO~ES
ARTE
ESTILO
VIAHGEM
TRABALHO
CUIDADO
PISCOLOGIA
SAUDE
ADMINISTRAÇA~O
LINGUAHGEM
TV
RECEITAS
MEHTODOS
VINHOS REPUTAHDOS
E
PASSARINHOS
CHAMPAGNE
AMORAS
PERFECT AMOUR
HOME
GARDEN
WEDDINGS
CELEBRATIONS
Traditional cafes and bars all over France are suffering and in some cases even closing, hit by changing attitudes, habits and now a poor economic climate.
O TEATRO
RECONHECIDO
LOVE
JOBS
FILLINTO
CHERRYH
DOREI TE VER
CE6 ME PARECEU
OHTIMO
DOREI TE VER
MARIZA
DA HORTA
ADORO MARIZA ORTH
DOREI TE VER
SORRY DARLING
QUANDO ENCONTRO
FILLINTO
SOH NEGOHCIOS
ADORAMOS
NEGOHCIOS
TEMOS ISSO EM COMUM
NEGOHCIOS
LUCIANA CURTIS
MARY WEICKERT
DUAS LINDAS
MAIS HUMA INDIA QUE ME QUASE ME OCORREU ME
CHERRY
QUASE DESMAIEI
SABE
DIO TIPO LINDA
401
K
CHOCOLATE
ABOHBORA
COM TOHQUES EM DE CO^CO VERDE
DE DESMAIAR
DE LINDA
By ANDY NEWMAN
Published: November 21, 2008
PITY poor irony. Declared dead after 9/11, it staged a strong rally beneath a “Mission Accomplished” banner, only to find itself in mortal danger once again.
Multimedia
Graphic
Of Course, There’s No Way to Chart ‘Irony’
Enlarge This Image
Peter Foley
HOPE FOR IRONY? Joan Didion, with Andrew Delbanco, at a talk.
Its ill health was noted by, among others, no less an ironist than Joan Didion, the nation’s poet laureate of disillusion. The week after the election, in a talk at the New York Public Library, Ms. Didion lamented that the United States in the era of Barack Obama had become an “irony-free zone,” a vast Kool-Aid tank where “naïveté, translated into ‘hope,’ was now in” and where “innocence, even when it looked like ignorance, was now prized.”
Who’d want to live in a world like that?
But are ironic sensibilities like Ms. Didion’s — the detachment of mind, the appreciation of the folly of taking things at face value — really disappearing?
Not according to the conservative humorist P. J. O’Rourke, who reported from his New Hampshire office on Wednesday that he was finishing a piece for The Weekly Standard with the working title, “Is It Too Soon to Start Talking About the Failed Obama Presidency Just Because He Isn’t President Yet?”
Not according to the thin black novelist Colson Whitehead, who wrote an Op-Ed in The New York Times under the headline, “Finally, a Thin President.”
“Something bad happens, like 9/11, it’s the death of irony,” Mr. Whitehead said in an e-mail message on Thursday. “Something good happens, like Obama’s win, it’s the death of irony. When will someone proclaim the death of iceberg lettuce? I’m sick of it making my salads boring.”
To be sure, President-elect, you’re no 9/11. Back then, irony seemed, for a time, impossible. Nowadays, Ms. Didion said in her talk, which will be published Monday in The New York Review of Books, it is simply “not the preferred way” of viewing events.
Mr. O’Rourke, for his part, said that Mr. Change himself, with his choices of usual suspects and Beltway insiders to help him run the country, was proving no slouch in the irony department.
But Ms. Didion might be on to something. A Nexis search found that the incidence of the words “irony,” “ironic” and “ironically” in major American newspapers during the two-week period beginning Nov. 6 slipped 19 percent from the same period last year.
In New York, Ms. Didion’s home city, irony has been steadily disappearing from daily newspapers for a decade, the analysis found. In those same two-week November periods from 2000 to 2008, appearances of “irony” and its cognates tumbled 56 percent. Some of the drop seems to be because of the shrinking of newspapers, but a similar Nexis search with a control word, “went,” showed a drop of only 32 percent, leaving an irony gap of 24 percentage points.
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The analysis may have its flaws. For one thing, the search algorithm also, ironically, picked up phrases like “end of irony.” More significantly, no self-respecting ironist actually uses the word “ironic,” except, perhaps, ironically.
Still, there is little doubt that these are challenging times for the professionally arch. Gilbert Gottfried, widely credited with being the first standup comic to tell a 9/11 joke (he complained 18 days after the attacks that he couldn’t get a direct flight to California because “they said they have to stop at the Empire State Building first”), noted that his gun-shy colleagues, afraid of spoiling the love fest or being accused of racism, “continue to do Sarah Palin insults, and that really struck me as odd.”
THE ONION, whose less-than-half-joking postelection headline read something like “Nation Finally Lousy Enough to Make Social Progress,” seems to be having trouble finding its bearings, too. Even a gentle, somewhat toothless Nov. 11 article, “International Con Man Barack Obama Leaves U.S. With $85 Million in Campaign Fund-Raising,” drew criticism on discussion boards for feeding into stereotypes about blacks, said The Onion’s editor, Joe Randazzo.
“After eight years of the Bush administration, where irony was almost a measure of desperation — maybe now that people have seen something happen they never thought possible, their sarcasm processors have kind of gone into shock,” he said.
Officials at “Saturday Night Live” declined to comment for this article. “We have been trying to avoid these ‘what now’ stories,” the show’s spokesman, Marc Liepis, said in an e-mail message.
Some sometime cynics bristled at the suggestion that they had gone soft or lost their edge. “To me, it’s a false choice to say we’re either going to be running our own little ‘Daily Show’ of the mind 24/7 or we’re going to be completely earnest,” said Kurt Andersen, the novelist, Spy magazine co-founder and author of a 3,500-word New York magazine mash note to the president-elect and the people who voted for him. “One can maintain one’s ironic armor and arsenal where one needs it.”
Roger Rosenblatt, the former Time columnist who wrote that Sept. 11 might at least “spell the end of the age of irony,” said that while irony had its place and time, this was not it.
“Irony,” Mr. Rosenblatt said, “is a diminishing act — the incongruity between what’s expected and what occurs makes us smile at the distance. But there are some events that occur, like 9/11, and perhaps Obama, though I didn’t think of him in this context, that are so big that they almost imply an obligation not to diminish it by clever comparisons.”
John H. McWhorter, the semiconservative black commentator and senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, said that the orgy of self-congratulation he saw among whites was an understandable and even sort of defensible response to the expiation of white America’s sins that Mr. Obama’s ascendance enabled. “When you vote for Obama,” he said, “you are showing that you are past the nastiness, and that’s a natural feeling and a healthy feeling for white people to have.”
But it is at times like these, Ms. Didion seemed to argue, when a distanced perspective is needed most. (Not that she was willing to elaborate on her talk. “Basically,” she said on the phone Tuesday, “I don’t like to talk about anything I’ve written or that I’m writing. What you write down, there it is and you’ve done it.”)
Mr. Randazzo of The Onion promised that irony would make a speedy recovery. “This isn’t the end of history,” he said, invoking another famous wrong prediction. “We never know what will be the next dumb thing to satirize — that’s the beauty of the thing.”
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