Ably channeling the spirit of Mencken, Gawker’s Tom Scocca writes in defense of Snark, and skewers the evil that produced it, Smarm. “We have popular names now for the rhetorical tools these flacks are deploying: the straw-man attack, the fake umbrage, the concern-trolling. Why are those tools so familiar? It is because they are essential parts of the smarmer’s tool kit, the grease gun and the rag and the spatula.” If you judge a man by his enemies, Scocca picks a lot of the right ones here.
Tag: Dave Eggers
Shave and a Hairy Monster (or two).
Genre director update: As if their Willy Wonka wasn’t creepy-serial-killer enough, Tim Burton and Johnny Depp will soon reunite for Sweeney Todd, the demon barber of Fleet Street. Meanwhile, the Spike Jonze-Dave Eggers interpretation of Where the Wild Things Are lands at Warner Bros. Says author Maurice Sendak of the project: “I am in love with it. If Spike and Dave do not do this movie now, I would just as soon not see any version of it ever get made.“