Someone Links to My Review of 'Man and Superman'; I Am Impressed with Myself

Image by thomwisdom via Flickr

The hed on this review was Kos and Superkos, and I ended it thus:

The problem with saying something in a very clever way is that a listener may suspect you are saying it only because it is clever, paradoxical, a way of getting attention, about as sincere as dying your hair pink. And thinking so, as I watched the play, I decided that Jack Tanner was essentially a blogger, of the jokey kind, to solid argument as the canape is to the good roast beef.

Such writers assume you'll pass by his/her blog the way you pass by a lively conversation at a cocktail party: a few will stop but most will take ten seconds worth and keep moving. A blogger of this kind makes his point on the fly and hopes the listener will be prodded to consider the implications of the exaggeration, that the tickle will turn into a thought.

Thus: Kos and Superkos is not apt. The Daily Kos is a serious website. The next Shavian witticism I find in it will be the first. The posts at DK are long and tend toward the dead serious, pretty angry (but not crazed in the amount and kind of the abuse it contains, the case the idiot O'Reilly has recently tried to make). The Kossacks are not into quick hits. Daily Kos is something you have to settle down for, not like Atrios who is short and nasty in his links.

And maybe that's what a good Shavian witticism is, a link to deeper thoughts and more detailed consideration. There's a competition for attention going on in the world. When it comes to "issues," a really good joke -- a paradox, a joke so droll you want to commit it to memory for the effect if not the message -- is one way to grab some part of that attention.

Yes, once Jack Tanner is settled down and married to Ann Whitfield, he will definitely blog.