Soon-to-be slivered Jack Shafer of Slate.com on the excesses of Wonkette and Gawker.
If you’ve yet to visit these blogs, imagine them as the twin offspring of a date-rape incident between Drudge Report and the original Spy magazine.
Ouch. Another zinger:
But after several weeks of consuming every cartoon obscenity, bludgeoning wisecrack, and meta-knowing, callow riposte served on these two blogs, I’ve been asking myself: Are these blogs a part of the better world we hope to leave to our sons and daughters?
Well, yes, if we intend for our children to grow strong from sucking bile instead of milk.
And on to the meat of his complaint:
Now, where I came from, if you intend to kill the puppy for fun, you must first make friends with it for a few days so there’s a whiff of surprise when the slaughter arrives. Not so with Gawker and Wonkette. They’re so fixated on the hunting of the snark that they’re prepared to flame everybody to a crisp.
It took me a minute to figure out what Shafer’s up to here. I’m slow sometimes, but why antagonize two way-popular bloggers? Then I got it: those who dish cutting remarks for a living need a bit of slicing themselves, for a corrective bit of context. I don’t really like this writing technique — appropriating the voice of the person you’re writing about — it’s too easy and obvious (says me, the king of easy and obvious).
Shafer would’ve been better off playing this piece a more straight, because people in a hurry might rush to the conclusion that he’s guilty of the crimes he’s supposed to be exposing. Sure, that was the point but there’s such a thing as being too clever (something that never happens to me, thank God.).