"One of the worst things to happen in America in the last two years is, surely, the birth and spread of the phrase 'nothing burger.'"

"It is used by President Trump’s supporters whenever Robert Mueller issues anything, including the many times he’s issued things that are, quite clearly, something burgers, with lots of shocking and damaging information that implicates people close to the President in something that seems like potential collusion with Russia or other possibly related crimes. [The Paul Manafort sentencing memo], Mueller’s longest, can be seen, by avid followers of his investigation, as not only an exquisitely built nothing burger but a commentary on our age and our expectations—at least, as it relates to the question of collusion during the 2016 election. Andy Kaufman could have hardly done so good a job at tweaking our deepest hunger."

Writes Adam Davidson in The New Yorker in "Robert Mueller’s Nothing-Burger Sentencing Memo on Paul Manafort."

Help me understand what Davidson was picturing when he wrote "Andy Kaufman could have hardly done so good a job at tweaking our deepest hunger." Presumably, he thinks Andy Kaufman did a really good job of tweaking our deep hungers, but which hungers? When? Can you dig up any clips of Kaufman that show him excelling at tweaking deep hungers? Outstripping Andy Kaufman — in Davidson's idea is Robert Mueller — right? — not the "avid followers" of the investigation. The "avid followers" are the audience for Mueller, and Mueller, like Kaufman, is seen as putting on a show for aficionados.

We, the audience, sit expectantly, wanting something from the showman, but he  withholds, even as he maintains our rapt attention. We keep watching, because he's captured our attention, but Mueller has captured our attention because we hope/fear he's got something devastating on Trump. The "deepest hunger" Davidson is thinking about is for the destruction of Trump. How is that like what Andy Kaufman did when — to name 2 examples of Kaufman playing with audience expectations — he did a show that consisted of nothing but singing all the verses of "99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall" or he stood on stage and read the entire text of "The Great Gatsby"?

There was no "deep hunger" that Kaufman was tweaking. He was tweaking the shallow hunger — borne of ticket-buying and seat-sitting — that there will be a show. When will this get funny? The joke is that it will never get funny. It will just go on like this. It's the nothing. The joke's on you for expecting something conventional and the only way to squirm out of your predicament is to realize it before the other people sitting around you not understanding that I'm never going to give you what you're dumb enough to want.

Am I approaching the enigma of the Mueller/Kaufman comparison?



ADDED: Davidson is surely wrong that the term "nothingburger" was born in the last 2 years! The OED traces the term all the way back to 1953. The official definition is: "A person or thing of no importance, value, or substance. Now esp.: something which, contrary to expectations, turns out to be insignificant or unremarkable."

Maybe Davidson — a fan of Kaufman's? — really is doing comedy. I must admit I laughed a lot while reading it out loud last night. He can't really mean that the phrase "nothing burger" is "One of the worst things to happen in America," so that's the tip-off, right? I'm overthinking this. I know!

But he could be serious. Aside from the mistake of believing the term got born during the Trump administration, he could genuinely believe it's one of the worst things to happen in America in the last 2 years. All he'd need is a long "worst things" list. You could have a list of "The 1 Million Worst Things to Happen in the Last 2 Years," and then some irritating word could be on it.

The ups and downs of blog comments.

Glenn Reynolds notes this NPR discussion about the difficulties of maintaining a comments section on a blog:

[MODERATOR ADAM] DAVIDSON: Jacquelyn Schlesier is a full-time moderator for Chowhound, a food discussion Web site. She says keeping things civil is a lot of work. She spends as many as 12 hours a day reading through posts and deleting anything offensive, abusive or off-topic. It's a food blog. How bad can things get? Really bad, Schlesier says, especially with some topics.

Ms. SCHLESIER: Children in restaurants - children in restaurants is an issue that Chowhounds cannot discuss civilly.

DAVIDSON: People can generally say anything they want about food or restaurants, but they can't insult each other. She says she just about never gets the truly nasty kind of posts that Kathy Sierra faced. That's because long ago, Chowhound established a tone.

Ms. SCHLESIER: Kids learn what's acceptable and how to behave in the real world by how they see other people around them and how they see adults behave. People in communities learn the same way.

DAVIDSON: But keeping things civil on Chowhound takes three paid moderators and 12 volunteers. They spend hundreds of hours a week getting rid of all the mean comments. A lot of people who run Web sites don't have that kind of time.

Ira Glass hosts the public radio show "This American Life." The show hosted a Web discussion board for years until one week, his show featured a story about a troubled relationship between a woman and her two daughters.

IRA GLASS: The day after it aired, people started posting to the bulletin board, saying that the girls were sluts and that the mom was a terrible mom. And it continued, and finally, we killed it. We killed the discussion board.

DAVIDSON: Glass didn't want to feel responsible for hosting nasty comments about people who bared their souls on his radio show.

Mr. GLASS: We could actually, you know, devote staff time and look at the board and monitor it and all. But, I mean - and the truth is, you know, what we wanted to do is make a radio show.

DAVIDSON: There's surely many like Glass, people who just don't have the time or inclination to enforce civility on their Web sites. And without people enforcing it, the online code of ethics is unlikely to have much impact.

Glenn adds:

People just tend to get nasty on the Web; the subject at hand, whatever it happens to be, isn't so much a provocation as an opportunity.

That all makes comments seem like a lost cause!

As for me and blog comments, I was against them before I was for them. Here's what I said on the subject at that blogging and politics panel I did here at Dartmouth College on Thursday:



(The video is straight off my MacBook laptop. I hope you enjoy the comical way my hand hogs the screen at the expense of my face.)