The other day, I read about the guff Gwyneth Paltrow was taking about her new website.  You can view GOOP here.  My curiosity piqued, I went browsing.  The website has only been up a short while.  It’s simple and straightforward…not what you’d expect from a celebrity who might want to clutter things up.  If you sign up for her newsletter, you receive one a week in your inbox.  One week might be a complete dinner with recipes.  Another week might be places to go and see when you’re traipsing around a certain city.  All in all, the byline of the site is “nourish the inner aspect,” which she encourages in the Be section of her website, Oprah-like, in asking experts from all walks of life to weigh in on thankfulness or stress or parenting.

Which brings me to snark.  I don’t understand the hate-filled jabs she’s getting.  I mean, come on, if you don’t like the site, stay away.  Don’t read it.  But is it necessary to tear down something that someone is creating with love and care?  Are we in preschool here–where the most fun you can have is to toddle over to the block tower someone’s painstakingly built and smash it to the ground, cackling all the way?

I get the part about Gwyneth having money, and I also understand her basic reader doesn’t, but that isn’t enough reason to wish her ill.  I applaud her efforts to make a difference in whatever way she can.  It’s more than I can say about a lot of people.  [And it’s a beautiful, clean website.  What’s not to love about it?  You go, girl!]

I saw this book in the bookstore yesterday: Snark: It’s Mean, It’s Personal, and It’s Ruining Our Conversation by David Denby.  I don’t need to read the book to understand, fully, what it’s about.  I’ve seen enough meanness to last a lifetime.

The following is from a USA Today article on the book.

Denby, in a phone interview, defines snark as “the knowing nasty tone, the cheap shot.” He writes that this staple of high school life is “spreading like pinkeye. … In a media society, snark is an easy way of seeming smart.”….So what’s wrong with snark?

“It’s a critique of style, it’s about grace and acting in classier ways,” says Denby. “I want people to write better and read better and look at better movies.”

The problem, he says, is that “snark cheapens talent into celebrity. It’s only interested in personality and gossip. Everything becomes personalized.”

Just because you don’t understand what an artist is doing doesn’t mean what he or she is doing is wrong or bad or unlovely.  It means you’re not the right audience for it.

So, could we please exercise our niceness for once?  I’m not saying to zip your lip about abuse or hypocrisy or evil; that would be encouraging the enemy.  What I’m saying is when ethics is not at stake, is it really necessary to rip the person to shreds?  Is there any benefit in it?  Besides thinking that you’re making yourself look hipper or superior?

I think not.