Yes, in what comes as very sad news to me, apparently irony died on the day Barack Obama was elected president. So stated the now-disgruntled Joan Didion (who didn't say whether she voted for or against irony):

The week after the election, in a talk at the New York Public Library, Ms. Didion lamented that the United States in the era of Barack Obama had become an "irony-free zone," a vast Kool-Aid tank where "naïveté, translated into 'hope,' was now in" and where "innocence, even when it looked like ignorance, was now prized."

Who'd want to live in a world like that?

Can I just say "Gag me with a spoon"?

The Times goes on to point out that "no self-respecting ironist actually uses the word "ironic," except, perhaps, ironically."

What about self-dissing ironists? I don't know what the permissible categories are for anything anymore, and I'm just baffled. I wish I had not seen this piece, which I saw not because I read the Times, but only because the fearless Ann Althouse linked it. She also offers some constructive criticism of both the Times and its one-way source:

The Times -- struggling mightily to develop its theme -- tried to get Didion to explain herself:

"Basically," she said on the phone Tuesday, "I don't like to talk about anything I've written or that I'm writing. What you write down, there it is and you've done it."

Which means: Fuck you, I'm a wordsmith.

The problem with Didion's remark is that she's being disingenuous. What the Times said she said was that she was "not... willing to elaborate on her talk." And this was a talk she gave -- specifically "a talk at the New York Public Library." Am I confused, or does "a talk" now mean "something I write down"? (The article does not say that she read from a prepared text, and there's no mention of a teleprompter.)

As the Times notes, there's a piece that P.J. O'Rourke has not finished yet, with the irresistible title of "Is It Too Soon to Start Talking About the Failed Obama Presidency Just Because He Isn't President Yet?" I'd read it, but it's nowhere to be found. However, it's never too soon to start blogging about the unfinished "too soon to talk about" piece. (Many already have, so I'm just a Johnny-come-lately.) Truly, it's one of the most timely pieces I've never read.

Of course, if Joan Didion had commenters, she would soon learn that not only can you face criticism for what you have written down, but for what you haven't! Nothing could be more unfair.

If there's one thing I love to hate, it's when people criticize me for stuff I have not written about.

I mean, what you have not written down, there it isn't and you haven't done it.

MORE: Speaking of things I don't write about, I'd like to lodge a complaint here about the annoying and tyrannical umlaut the Times places over the "i" in "naïveté." I realize that it might be grammatically correct, but sheesh. I can't copy and paste an umlautted "i"; instead I have to laboriously write out "ampersand i uml" plus a semicolon, or else just scratch the umlaut and substitute an ordinary "i" -- which would constitute misquoting, wouldn't it?

Damn. Them.

MORE: While not mentioning irony by name, Glenn Reynolds links the Althouse post and quotes the O'Rourke title, while allowing that he's willing to wait:

...I'm waiting until at least February, I think. Just to be sporting. Besides, he's looking ever more hawkish and tax-cutting, so who knows -- things may work out . . . .

Especially the future of irony.

Seriously, Obama the tax-cutting hawk?

Or Obama the hawkish tax-cutter. Whatever.

Let's keep hope alive!