14 December, 2013

Dave Eggers, Tom Scocca, and Why It's Not Awful to Be Nice : The New Yorker

Dave Eggers, Tom Scocca, and Why It's Not Awful to Be Nice : The New Yorker: Now that is an argument worthy of a manifesto. What defines our era, after all, is not really the insistence of those in authority that we all behave properly and politely. It is defined, instead, by the institutionalization of satire. Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart and “Saturday Night Live” and, yes, Gawker have emerged, all proceeding on the assumption that the sardonic, comic tone permits a kind of honesty in public discourse that would not be possible otherwise. This is the orthodoxy Scocca is so anxious to defend. He needn’t worry. For the moment, we are all quite happy to sink giggling into the sea.