{"id":2348,"date":"2009-06-10T17:08:53","date_gmt":"2009-06-10T22:08:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/moss-place.stblogs.org\/?p=2348"},"modified":"2009-06-10T17:08:53","modified_gmt":"2009-06-10T22:08:53","slug":"you-stay-classy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/moss-place.stblogs.org\/index.php\/2009\/06\/you-stay-classy\/","title":{"rendered":"You stay classy, David Letterman"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/lileks.com\/bleat\/?p=2542\">Lileks<\/a> (emphasis mine; <a href=\"http:\/\/lileks.com\/bleat\/?p=2542\">RTWT<\/a>):<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8230;.it must be funny, because David is funny and hip. Right? Or maybe not; maybe he\u2019s actually a brackish, hermetically-souled guy who\u2019s spend the last twenty years going from table to table with a giant wooden grinder, asking anyone if they want some fresh-ground scorn with that. Say when. Or maybe he\u2019s about as edgy as a soccer ball, and exists only to remind people they were Edgy once, and hence must be ever-blessed with the gift of Wryness and Irony. With those shields we can never grow old, you know. We\u2019ll always be as sharp and perceptive as we were when we were sitting on a cast-off sofa in college, working through a midweek buzz, happily fell@ted by the preconceptions the TV so charitably provided&#8230;.<br \/>\nWhat\u2019s amusing is how unamusing he is in the clip. How sour he seems&#8230;. Letterman is empty; he\u2019s inert; he stands for nothing except disdain for people foolish enough to stand for anything &#8211; aside from rote obesciance to all the things Decent People stand for, of course, all those shopworn assumptions passed around in the bubble.<br \/>\nThis posture was fresh in \u201980; it even had energy. <strong>But it paralyzes the heart after a while.<\/strong> You end up an SOB who shows up at the end of the night to reassure that nothing matters.  I think  he may have invented the posture of Nerd Cool, an aspect so familiar to anyone who reads message boards &#8211; the skill at deflating enthusiasm, puncturing passion with a hatpin lobbed from a safe distance. <strong>The instinctive unease  with the wet messy energy of actual people. <\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Lileks (emphasis mine; RTWT): &#8230;.it must be funny, because David is funny and hip. Right? Or maybe not; maybe he\u2019s actually a brackish, hermetically-souled guy who\u2019s spend the last twenty years going from table to table with a giant wooden grinder, asking anyone if they want some fresh-ground scorn with that. Say when. Or maybe&hellip; <a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/moss-place.stblogs.org\/index.php\/2009\/06\/you-stay-classy\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">You stay classy, David Letterman<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2348","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/moss-place.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2348","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/moss-place.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/moss-place.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moss-place.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moss-place.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2348"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/moss-place.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2348\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/moss-place.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moss-place.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/moss-place.stblogs.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}