Hmmmmmmmmmmm, What about the Irony of it all?

One person who was glad when "Seinfeld" ended was Jedediah Purdy. He is also, no doubt, eagerly awaiting Bart Simpson's retirement. Mr. Purdy is the home-schooled West Virginia wunderkind who last year, at the age of 25, published "For Common Things," an earnest, impassioned homily that urged us to rediscover civic virtue, both in government and in our private lives, and that blamed for our current malaise nothing less than irony itself. Irony, he wrote, is a corrosive, world-weary habit of mind, "a quiet refusal to believe in the depth of relationships, the sincerity of motivation, or the truth of speech -- especially earnest speech." He singled out Jerry Seinfeld, "irony incarnate," as a symbol of all that is wrong with our culture, but he could have just as easily chosen Bart or, for that matter, Dave Eggers.