Katie Roiphe has made a career out of provocation (here and elsewhere). She’s good at it! Take today, for instance, when Slate published an essay of hers entitled “Gawker Is Big Immature Baby” (typo on snark-filled purpose), positing that the blog has every right to be snarky, it’s just that they don’t do honor to the form.
She’s right, of course, that simple bile is fairly uninteresting. The problem is that Roiphe seems to be writing about a now-ancient iteration of the website, which has evolved a great deal (and gotten noticeably less snarky and insider New York-y) since Emily Gould — the writer whose mildly nasty 2007 post about Roiphe, and subsequent request for a book blurb, seem to have inspired the essay — was on staff. The Internet moves awfully quickly, and that’s part of the reason bloggers’ wit isn’t always rapier sharp: No doubt we’d all be smarter and funnier if we could take four years to formulate a response.
Gawker Is Big Immature Baby [Slate]
