In Defense of Irony

For no apparent reason, the media have become very excited about For Common Things, a book by a Yale law student named Jedediah Purdy. No one else is reading it, but in my earnest effort to join the media elite and thus get a promotion, I too want to write about this book.

Mostly I want to say that Jedediah Purdy is a funny name. And also that his argument that irony is poisoning our culture is really stupid. That's the kind of argument we ironists use. We also use idiot and scalawag. But ironically.

I called Purdy's publicist and asked...