Toby Young criticizes a recent book-length critique of snark. Not The Snark, but being snarky, as in mean and harsh or witty, mean, and harsh. Apparently, the book on snark doesn’t correct for bias. “Thus when Rush Limbaugh and Bill O’Reilly attack Hillary Clinton, they are guilty of snark, but when Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert attack George W. Bush they are appealing to civic virtue.”

Now, I’m feeling poetic. I must look up that Lewis Carroll poem:

The Bellman looked uffish, and wrinkled his brow.

“If only you’d spoken before!

It’s excessively awkward to mention it now,

With the Snark, so to speak, at the door!

“We should all of us grieve, as you well may believe,

If you never were met with again–

But surely, my man, when the voyage began,

You might have suggested it then?

“It’s excessively awkward to mention it now–

As I think I’ve already remarked.”

And the man they called “Hi!” replied, with a sigh,

“I informed you the day we embarked.

“You may charge me with murder–or want of sense–

(We are all of us weak at times):

But the slightest approach to a false pretense

Was never among my crimes!

“I said it in Hebrew–I said it in Dutch–

I said it in German and Greek:

But I wholly forgot (and it vexes me much)

That English is what you speak!”