By Lambert Strether of Corrente.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s a fine example of snark:<\/p>\n
JD Vance\u2019s porn stash. pic.twitter.com\/tgdAAGm7zP<\/p>\n
\u2014 Ross \u201cShabba Doo\u201d Smith (@EBHeater) July 25, 2024<\/p>\n
For those who came in late, the claim \u2014 which I know I could be amplifying by repeating, but I hope that you, dear readers, what the strength of character to resist it \u2014 is that J.D. Vance, in one of the editions of his book Hillbilly Elegy, wrote that he performed an analog of sexual congress involving a couch and a latex glove. Hence the couch images above. Get it? The claim is false (WaPo; Vanity Fair; Rolling Stone). Snopes has the most tellin detail, in (sorry) \u201cNo, JD Vance Did Not Say He Had Sex with Couch Cushions\u201c:<\/p>\n
This rumor was false. Vance\u2019s memoir contained no such passage, including in the first edition, as we later reported in a second article. Further, as KnowYourMeme.com reported, [the originator] @rickrudescalves \u2014 who later protected his account so only followers could see his posts \u2014 \u2018signaled that he was joking when he followed up the tweet with the Go on the Internet and Tell Lies meme.<\/p>\n
This Democrat false claim is minor league stuff, not to be compared with liberal icon Barney Frank\u2018s boyfriend running a brothel in the apartment they shared, or whatever has been recorded on the curiously undisclosed tapes from thoroughly bipartisan Jeffrey Epstein\u2019s townhouse and tropical island. Nevertheless, it was all over my Twitter feed for days, even though those who were one degree of separation away from @rickrudescalves\u2019s original Tweet knew it was false. And so, for days, that was all anybody who was anybody talked about when they talked about J.D. Vance. They most certainly did not talk about the populist message \u2014 pseudo or not \u2014 of Hillbilly Elegy. That was how the Kamala campaign introduced Vance to the American public. So, all in all, their initial salvo of snark was a great success, and I expect we will see more snark in the future. In fact, after I had done the research for this post, the following appeared in HuffPo: \u201cKamala Harris Is Giving Us Snark \u2014 And It\u2019s The Energy We\u2019ve Been Waiting For\u201d (the whole liberalgasm discourse is redolent of \u201cenergy,\u201d \u201cwaiting,\u201d and of course \u201cwe\u201d):<\/p>\n
But on Thursday morning, when Vice President Kamala Harris\u2019 presidential campaign sent reporters an email with the subject line: \u201cStatement on a 78-Year-Old Criminal\u2019s Fox News Appearance,\u201d it was such a contrast from the usual stream of dry and generic emails that inundate our inboxes that it didn\u2019t even seem real at first. <\/p>\n
\u201cAfter watching Fox News this morning we only have one question, is Donald Trump ok?\u201d the press release began, before laying out a bulleted list of \u201ctakeaways\u201d from the former president\u2019s appearance Thursday on his favorite program \u201cFox & Friends,\u201d where he often goes on rants and makes baseless claims. <\/p>\n
Among the Harris campaign\u2019s list of bullet points: \u201cTrump is old and quite weird?\u201d Naturally, that line quickly got the internet\u2019s attention.<\/p>\n
Seems like the Clinton 2.0 campaign is taking the \u201cdeplorables\u201d tack again, except with a more youthful vibe. Something to look forward to!<\/p>\n
There\u2019s been a good deal of work done on snark, some of it scholarly, but as a former dedicated and long-time practitioner, I will feel free to make assertions, rather than document everything (or rather, my assertions are the documentation). In this post, I will first give define the characteristics of snark, then give a cursory history (including my own practice). I will then provide an exhibit of a Democrat\u2019s rapturous embrace of the practice, along with a few remarks about the implications of their jouissance (which is not too strong a word. <\/p>\n
* * *<\/p>\n
I define the haracteristics of snark as follows, my scope being limited to extremely online electoral politics (a field in which, I might add, I have been blogging more or less daily for twenty-odd years). Snark is:<\/p>\n
1) Reactive. From George Tsiveriotis\u2019s Masters thesis at MIT (2017): \u201cBlogging lends itself to snark first because it is reactive. Many bloggers [not NC!] really don\u2019t write much at all. They are more like impresarios, curators, or editors, picking and choosing things they find on line, occasionally slapping on a funny headline or adding a snarky (read: snotty and catty) comment\u2026. Some days, the only original writing you se on a blog is the equivalent of \u201cRead this\u2026. Take a look\u2026. But, seriously this is lame\u2026. Can you believe this?\u201d As with blogging, so with Twitter. @EBHeater (quoted above) was reacting to @rickrudescalves\u2019s original Tweet. @rickrudescalves was reacting to Vance\u2019s nomination (and his book).<\/p>\n
2) Gleefully mocking. An anthropologist, says Tsiveriotis, would consider snark a \u201cdegradation ceremony.\u201d He writes: \u201c[Snark is] our first tactic for desensitizing ourselves, for making it clear that the person we\u2019re attacking isn\u2019t human\u2013and that since it began as a joke, we can\u2019t be held accountable for where others take the conversation<\/p>\n
3) Knowing. You\u2019ve got to be in on the joke (for example, couch images in @EBHeater\u2019s tweet). From David Denby\u2019s Snark (2009): \u201cThis is an essay about a strain of nasty, knowing abuse spreading like pinkeye through the national conversation\u2014a tone of snarking insult provoked and encouraged by the new hybrid of print, television, radio and the Internet.\u201d <\/p>\n
4) Virulent. Well-designed and -executed snark spreads virulently, like gossip, or an earworm (or a meme), as did the Vance\/Couch conjuncture. As with blogging, and the Twitter, so with TikTok. (We\u2019ll see how \u201cold and quite weird\u201d does. I\u2019m starting to see \u201cweird\u201d a lot already.)<\/p>\n
5) A form of character assassination As of, for example, J.D. Vance.<\/p>\n
6) A team sport. Many, many accounts besides @EBHeater followed @rickrudescalves, some (no doubt) from campaign assets, others artisanal. In all cases, however, the accounts amplifying and refining the snark are engaged in a collective (\u201cstrength of weak ties\u201c) effort. They are \u201cfriends\u201d (and not enemies).<\/p>\n
* * *<\/p>\n
Search being what it is, I can\u2019t produce anything like a timeline for the term \u201csnark.\u201d Certainly publications like New York Spy (1986 to 1998) paved the way for the form, if not the term: What, after all, is \u201cshort-fingered vulgarian\u201d \u2014 coined at that venue[1] \u2014 but reactive, gleefully mocking, knowing, virulent, and a form of character assassination (however justified)? The only characteristic missing is \u201ca team sport,\u201d not easy in print. The first usage example I can find is from 2003, by New York Times writer Laura Miller, who applied it to book reviews: \u201cI learned that you had to be careful in assigning books by young, celebrated authors to young, uncelebrated reviewers; the results were likely to be either starry-eyed hero-worship or (in the case of the more talented writers) a snide fury out of all due proportion to the subject at hand: snarkiness.\u201d By that time, the liberal Democrat blogosphere was well underway, with Philadelphia, where I then, happily albeit unemployedly, then lived, as its epicenter; Atrios (my blogfather) is quoted at then-important political blog site Daily Kos as having hit a \u201cNew Snarkitude High\u201d in 2005.<\/p>\n
My own personal best in snarkitude took place in 2004, after Bush the Younger\u2019s re-election. Flushed with victory, Republican talking heads simulatanously began chattering about a \u201cBush mandate\u201d (\u201cI have political capital. I intend to spend it\u201c). In reaction, I \u201cGoogle-bombed\u201d \u201cBush mandate,\u201d so that a search for that term led to the website for Mandate magazine, which featured, as I recall, the image of a fetching young gentleman in a sailor\u2019s cap on the cover. This exploit, sadly, illustrates another characteristic of snark:<\/p>\n
7) Lack of principles. After all, it\u2019s not wrong to be gay, any more than it\u2019s wrong to wear a sailor\u2019s cap. The New York Times shows exactly the same characteristic here: <\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.nakedcapitalism.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/snark_trump-putin.png\")
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(This was too much even more Mother Jones: \u201cThere Are Better Ways to Mock Trump Than Joking That He\u2019s Putin\u2019s Gay Lover\u201c).<\/p>\n
However, snark\u2019s unprincipled nature wasn\u2019t the reason I gave it up (even if snark greatly influenced my style, my tone and locution). I didn\u2019t like what it did to me personally: Always being galvanized into displays of mocking wit by events, instead of taking the time to being analytical; always outraged, and generating outrage; basically stabby. Further, the blogosphere had by then bifurcated into the Exra Kleins and Matt Yglesias\u2019s of this world and us small fry; it was time to refocus. It was fun while it lasted, until it was not fun. No doubt the young people now discovering snark will go through a similar cycle, grid willing.[2]<\/p>\n
* * *<\/p>\n
I was moved to write about snark because of this thread from David Roberts (@drvolts; 221.3K Follower), late of Vox, who now has a Substack devoted to \u201cenergy and politics.\u201d I\u2019ll quote several Tweets from his account, where he\u2019s reacting to @rickrudescalves:<\/p>\n
I’m enjoying that the couch jokes are bugging Republicans but I’m enjoying it almost more that they are bugging harumphing, self-consciously morally superior Dems. “We’re better than this.” No we’re not. Knife those fuckers.<\/p>\n
\u2014 David Roberts (@drvolts) July 27, 2024<\/p>\n
Should be an exciting 100 days (I sympathize with the dislike of \u201ccivility\u201d; back in the day, the late David Broder [genuflects] called us \u201cvituperative, foul-mouthed bloggers of the left [sic]\u201d because we shared that dislike. Politically, it was utterly ineffective, except possibly at building an in-group). The assumption that Kamala is not \u201cself-consciously morally superior\u201d is interesting. More:<\/p>\n
\u2026 “we’re mocking you because you’re pathetic & we feel like it.” The irrationality of it, the fact that it’s made up & kind of ridiculous, is the *point*. This is not about exchanging semantic information. It’s about kicking sand in someone’s face. It’s a dominance play.<\/p>\n
\u2014 David Roberts (@drvolts) July 27, 2024<\/p>\n
#2, Gleefully mocking: \u201ckicking sand\u201d is a degradation ceremony. <\/p>\n
Let me now add:<\/p>\n
8) Bullshit. \u201cNot about exchanging semantic information\u201d \u2014 as in, for example, that the couch claim is false \u2014 means, precisely, that snark is bullshit in Harry Frankfurt\u2019s sense (\u201cstrategic indifference to the veracity of one\u2019s assertion\u201c). <\/p>\n
More:<\/p>\n
We are in a rare moment when the left is feeling its oats. It has a little swagger! It’s been a long time. Finally, it can stick its chest out, be the one kicking sand instead of the one coughing & apologizing for putting its face in the way. Finally!<\/p>\n
\u2014 David Roberts (@drvolts) July 27, 2024<\/p>\n
A liberalgasm. More:<\/p>\n
I know lots of people wish that politics were a matter of evidence & reasoned argument & coming together despite our differences. And maybe someday we can get some of that back. But right now, it’s a knife fight, and being ostentatiously high-minded \u2026<\/p>\n
\u2014 David Roberts (@drvolts) July 27, 2024<\/p>\n
\u201cBullshit\u201d = \u201cmuscle\u201d is a weird flex, but OK. More:<\/p>\n
\u2026 winning is much more important than a campaign that flatters your personal tastes & predilections. Saving actual lives, preventing actual suffering, is more morally significant than discourse that flatters your identity. <\/p>\n
Get a taste for blood. Fight! pic.twitter.com\/lhjzXeF4qW<\/p>\n
\u2014 David Roberts (@drvolts) July 27, 2024<\/p>\n
Well, at least we\u2019ve only got \u201cblood\u201d and not soil. First, this is exactly same logic that led to the madness of RussiaGate. Second, it\u2019s the same logic that will lead to Democrats denying Trump office, in the case of victory, by any means necessary (including, as we see, outright lying as a basic tactic[3], but going on from there). Third and finally, if liberal Democrats really want to play \u201cdominance politics\u201d, I think FAFO is in order as a reminder. And finally:<\/p>\n
Just think about the evolution from Biden’s “threat to democracy” language (high-minded harumphing from a soapbox) to the Harris\/Walz “good lord these are some creepy, weird fuckers” language (what you’d say to a friend). Same basic message. But it *feels* different.<\/p>\n
\u2014 David Roberts (@drvolts) July 27, 2024<\/p>\n
Well, I\u2019m happy to see the \u201cour democracy\u201d put to bed because it was obvious nonsense. But if Clinton 2.0 thinks that running against \u201ccreepy, weird fuckers\u201d (unlike, say, the totally not creepy convicted felon Anthony Weiner, whose Clintonian staffer, Huma Abedin, is now engaged to the totally not weird Alex Soros) instead of against \u201cdeplorables,\u201d good luck to them. <\/p>\n
If this is the reaction of a level-headed energy geek like Roberts, Lord only knows how more volatile liberal Democrats are reacting.<\/p>\n
* * *<\/p>\n
There remains the question of whether snark is effective (unaddressed and assumed by Roberts, presumably too enthralled by his calls for blood).<\/p>\n
Twenty years ago, I don\u2019t think snark was effective; Democrats took back the House in 2006 not because bloggers were foul-mouthed and snarky, but on two policy issues: The Katrina debacle, and Social Security, which Bush had threatened to spend some of his political capital cutting. (I believe that insiders familiar with that effort will argue that Pelosi was swayed by various online presences not to compromise with Bush, but I am very dubious that snarkitude had anything to do with it.) These were, in any case, policy issues. God knows we snarked on Bush for his stupidity, his religion, his towel-snapping, his Bushisms, for being a dry drunk, for his frat boy person, and on \u201cMission Accomplished,\u201d and on and on and on, but none of it took. Policy did.<\/p>\n
It may be that today, things are different. The Internet (social media, search) scales out to millions instantly in a way that the blogosphere did not. Arguably, Fetterman\u2019s god-tier social media team kept his campaign alive and brought him to victory despite the stroke that disabled him (and I would be very interested to see if any of them are working for Kamala; something to research). For example:<\/p>\n
TV: There were so many headline-worthy social media moments in the campaign. What was your favorite?<\/p>\n
[Sophie Ota]: One of them has to be the crudit\u00e9 moment.[4] It really utilized every single part of my team. We got out a video and photos and I literally had my staffer run and get a veggie platter on her way to film time. And that photo was our most engaged-with post. We raised half a million dollars within 24 hours just off a sticker someone on my team designed. Then we were able to use that moment to get more people to volunteer with us and sign up for our relational organizing training and canvass-your-friends-on-social-media training. It went viral on Twitter, but it was also a big moment for every corner.<\/p>\n
Of course, the the crudit\u00e9 moment was true; but as we have seen with the couch example, the truth is no longer needed.<\/p>\n
If were a Republican, and still in the snark business, felt that the fate of the nation was at stake, and was convinced like Roberts that \u201cdominance politics\u201d is the order of the day, well\u2026 Two can play the game[5]. The phrase \u201cla grande horizontale\u201d comes to mind (along with \u201cplausible deniability\u201d). Not that there\u2019s anything wrong with either of those two things. The next hundred days should be a wonderfully clarifying spectacle for voters and non-voters alike.<\/p>\n
NOTES<\/p>\n
[1] Fittingly, the phrase appears in a parody advertisement:<\/p>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.nakedcapitalism.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/07\/short_finger.png\")
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[2] Time presses, so I pass over the 2005 example of \u201cBox Turtle Ben\u201d (still virulent after nineteen years!), and sightings from 2020, and 2024 (very much everything old is new again).<\/p>\n
[3] As, for example, Kamala did, along with every other Democrat who said that Biden was \u201csharp as a rack\u201d (sorry, \u201ctack.\u201d MR SUBLIMINAL See how easy?)<\/p>\n
[4] The moment, from Teen Vogue:<\/p>\n
In a video originally posted in the spring, the heart surgeon, who was propelled to fame by Oprah Winfrey, walks through a grocery store. Things are rocky from the start: In the first five seconds of the video, he calls the store \u201cWegner\u2019s,\u201d and it turns out he was actually shopping at a store called Redner\u2019s. \u201cMy wife wants some vegetables for crudit\u00e9s,\u201d Oz says before picking up broccoli, asparagus, and carrots in turn and stating their prices. He goes on to include guacamole and salsa, commenting that it would cost \u201c$20 for crudit\u00e9s, and this doesn\u2019t include the tequila. I mean, that\u2019s outrageous. And we got Joe Biden to thank for this.\u201d<\/p>\n
A 22-year-old Twitter user who goes by the handle @umichvoter and asked to remain anonymous to protect his privacy (and now has a Twitter following of over 27,000), shared the video with a simple message: \u201cWho thought this was a good idea.\u201d The tweet quickly went viral, with Fetterman sharing the original video from April with the message: \u201cIn PA, we call this a veggie tray.\u201d <\/p>\n
Notice that \u2018Who thought this was a good idea\u201d is almost identical to George Tsiveriotis\u2019s example: \u201cCan you believe this?\u201d<\/p>\n
[5] From a master of the art:<\/p>\n
Reminds me of when LBJ was running for Congress and told his campaign manager to say his opponent was a “pig fucker.” But he isn’t a pig fucker, his manager protested. LBJ responded, “let him deny it.”<\/p>\n
\u2014 Democracy Pursued by the Furies (@bluescat47) July 25, 2024<\/p>\n
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