October 22, 2007
The sardonic
Frederick Buechner says of Reinhold Niebuhr, one if his professors at Union, that he (had)… a deep-cut, sardonic mouth.(1)
Buechner goes on to say that Niebuhr had a nose quick to sniff out the irony and ambivalence of things in general and of piety in particular… an eye sharp to perceive that the children of darkness are apt to be not only wiser but often more appealing and plausible than the children of light. This reminds me of how much I miss Niebuhr and what he could do for our times. But I miss the sardonic even more.
We’ve irony a plenty, though few seem to identify it, appreciate it, or even to be aware of it. The sardonic seems even more remote. H W Fowler in his comments on humour (that’s Britspeak for humor) says of the sardonic that its motive is self-relief, its province, adversity, its method or means, pessimism, its audience — quite obviously — one’s self.(2)
The children of darkness — both in church and state — are not only wiser and obviously more appealing and plausible than the children of light. One need only to consider the multitude of candidates for our next president, all self-promoting “children of light.” No one of them of either party seems to grasp the irony of these times, let alone, the sardonic. They take themselves so seriously that the work to which they claim to be called and that surely demands more attention than themselves rarely gets attended in the least except perhaps tangentially lest “the children of darkness” suddenly catch on.
In the “light” of all this, I am more than pleased to see Stephen Colbert running for president. Colbert, as you know, is the arrogantly brilliant shaker and mover of The Colbert Report (pron. Colbare Repore) on Comedy Central, the TV channel which often pushes obscenity to the point of absurdity(3). He has just this past week announced his candidacy, although he’s running only in his home state of South Carolina. If anybody’s any more in touch with the sardonic, which is to say any more disdainfully and skeptically humorous and derisively mocking thus better equipped to be president than Colbert, then show me the gate.
As Fowler rightly said of the sardonic milieu, we live in adverse times, times in which one must often resort to pessimism if only for self-relief. The children of darkness are obviously once again having a ball. It makes a person wonder whether in the last, to cynic or swim.(4)
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1) Listening to Your Life, p 32, Harper Collins, 1992
2) Dictionary of Modern English Usage, 2d ed, pp 252f, Oxford, 1965
3) Comedy Central also sponsors The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, another medium through which “fake news” reports often offer more accuracy than any of the other, graver sources.
4) After reading this, if you suddenly feel the impulse to grin sardonically, beware! The L. herba sardonia, plant of Sardinia, was poisonous and was said to have twisted the face into a contorted grin during the death-throes.
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Thanks for “Sardonic.” In the same vein I walked into my local bookseller last week and was greeted by a display: Joel Osteen’s latest thriller “Be the Best You YOu Can Be” (or some blather like that) and Colbert’s book “I Am America and You Can Be Too.”
So I whispered into the counter person’s ear that they might want to consider separating Osteen and Colbert by several feet at least, lest sparks fly between Colbert’s sardonic and Osteen’s self-righteousness.
She, being a twenty-something, didin’t understand a thing I was talking about. There’s a lot of that going around these days.
Anyway, thanks.
Comment by Robert Braband — October 22, 2007 @ 5:25 pm