Snarky Behavior

I’ve been reading a lot of reactions to the Washington Post’s recent Outlook piece:  “We Scream, We Swoon, How Dumb Can We Get?”

A lot of the commentary out there is pretty good and worth searching and reading for (laziness prevents me from hyper-linking).

My own take is this:  whatever the intention of writing this piece might have been, the impulse comes from describing one’s personal relationship with Barack Obama and the movement he represents vis a vis the response he elicits from large crowds.

The fact that a group of sorority girls at the University of Maryland screams like Beatles’ fans in his presence is somewhat embarrassing.  Especially with so much talk of “identity politics,” it can be an atomizing force within a broad-based coalition if the deeply-inspirational gravitas of the candidate is cheapened by inappropriate reactions from within the crowd.

I don’t understand how that impulse to disassociate oneself from a particular sub-group translates into sweeping generalizations confirming sexist stereotypes.  And I don’t agree with the tactic, or the decision to run that viewpoint.