Just Kidding

I would like to use this space to extend a warm thank you to all the scholar-athletes who took the time out of their busy training regimens to write those well thought-out responses to my last column. For those just tuning in, that column gently suggested that many who play sport at a high level are admitted to Harvard for slightly different reasons than the rest of the student body—and that the admissions committee is absolutely right to admit them.

Ah, I’ve done it again, fallen into the trap of sarcasm. Of course, the response from many athletes was an unrelenting stream of expletives and ill will (there were some nice responses too, from both athletes and civilians). Though I thought I had been clear about my conclusion—that athletes, like the rest of us, deserve to be here—I had made the mistake of using sarcasm earlier in the column. This sarcasm had poisoned any earnestness I later tried to employ.

One friend with whom I had lately fallen out of contact (and who is a very scholarly athlete) wrote in an e-mail that, among other things, the column was “terrible,” that “no girl wants to date you anymore,” and that “every athlete wants to rip your face off.” The excerpts have been cleaned up so as not to offend The Crimson’s family readership or those who value good spelling.

I responded to her e-mail apologetically, urging her to peruse the column closely, to read the actual lines and not between them, not to be led astray by the sarcasm in the second paragraph. “Dude,” came back the reply, “I would hope that you could recognize the sarcasm in my own response.” So that’s how my own medicine tastes!

But seriously, the usefulness of sarcasm bears some pondering. Why have humans developed this habit of saying one thing and meaning the opposite? To start with, there is the humor. For instance, a very funny sketch on the Dec. 1 episode of “Saturday Night Live” showed Will Ferrell stumping for a book about how to train your house pet using sarcasm: “That’s a good dog, that fecal shade of brown really goes perfectly with my beige ottoman. Good doggie.” In a recent review session, a professor reminded students that the final exam would be closed-book and that “you can only bring in what you can fit on your wrist.” Similarly, when I suggested that the women’s crew team was holding oar blades to the throats of college writers, I did not expect any sentient reader to take me literally. Possibly the line was not funny. Certainly it was not true.

Or was it? Sarcasm is often about saying one thing, meaning the opposite, but actually meaning something somewhere in between. Sarcasm can be about “sort of kidding.” For instance, I will readily admit that I approached my inquiry into “why jocks exist” with some acidity. I was under the impression that the Harvard presses, which are almost entirely devoid of athletes, were portraying athletes too reverently. Somewhere between my heavy sarcasm and my earnestness, there was the nutmeg of argument.

So we have decided that sarcasm is a delicate species of communication, but can it be a useful one? For answers, we can look in these very pages. On Dec. 13, Fletcher University Professor Cornel West ’74 was quoted, in response to questions about the Af-Am 10 take-home exam mix-up and the possible intervention of University President Lawrence H. Summers: “I have nothing to say about Brother Summers—I just wish him well.”

It is possible that West did really, sincerely, mean to wish his boss well. But I read this well before the months-long riff between West and Summers was made embarrassingly public (embarrassing for whom is another column entirely), and even then I took the quotation to be sarcastic. Why would West take this moment of obvious conflict to wish Summers well? Did West have any responsibility for how readers would perceive the comment? Unfortunately, West, who has recently applied for a medical leave of absence, did not respond to an (unsarcastic) e-mail before press time. The evidence of sarcasm here is circumstantial—I don’t know West and don’t presume to guess his meanings and motivations.

But I prefer not to know, because I think sarcasm at least shows that, whatever one thinks about his recent behavior, West has style. The SNL skit reminds us that it’s not what you tell your dog—it’s how you tell it. One can admire a funny, stylish comment even if in the process it is necessary to find quarrel with it. For me, the conservative Crimson column by Ross G. Douthat ’02 is a prime example of this phenomenon—I disagree with his arguments even if his style agrees with me. Sarcasm gives us a colorful kaleidoscope realm where the women’s crew team can brandish oar blades and even a bit of pathos can creep into a University professor’s comments. Especially during exam time, a time when we are more likely to slit our wrists than write notes on them, we could all take life a little less seriously.

But the even deeper fact of sarcasm is that it gives the reader some measure of interest and opens writing up to interpretation—a side effect unknown to funereal earnestness. Whether the readers laugh, nod or wring out angry letters to the editor, they have learned something about themselves. One might argue that journalism should be unbending and obvious, that we don’t read The New York Times to learn about ourselves. Perhaps sarcasm is strictly the province of novelists and playwrights. But might we include columnists under the sarcasm umbrella? My own published sarcasm gives me the chance to learn about my readers, to learn about myself and to learn about myself more if the Yardstick column gets renewed for another semester. Just kidding. Sort of.

Couper Samuelson ’02 is a history and literature and French studies concentrator in Kirkland House. His column appears regularly.