In The final irony, Zoe Williams (a Brit) tackles irony (using some British allusions I don’t quite get):
Pretty much everything is ironic these days. Irony is used as a synonym for cool, for cynicism, for detachment, for intelligence; it’s cited as the end of civilisation, as well as its salvation. Pretty much every form of culture claims to be shot through with it, even (especially) the ones that conspicuously aren’t. I read last week that Bruce Forsyth hosting Have I Got News For You was an ‘ironic statement’, as if you could ascend into irony just by being old, as you used to with wisdom. I read, too, that it was ironic for Alan Millburn to leave his job to spend more time with his family, when the doctors and nurses under his care don’t have that facility; well, it’s not ironic, it’s just standard-issue self-interest, with maybe a smattering of hypocrisy. I’ve read claims of an ‘ironic’ interest in Big Brother — nope. Lazy, maybe. Possibly postmodern. Not ironic.We have a grave problem with this word (well, in fact, it’s not really grave — but I’m not being ironic when I call it that, I’m being hyperbolic. Though often the two amount to the same thing. But not always).
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Most pressingly, though, there are a number of misconceptions about irony that are peculiar to recent times. The first is that September 11 spelled the end of irony. The second is that the end of irony would be the one good thing to come out of September 11. The third is that irony characterises our age to a greater degree than it has done any other. The fourth is that Americans can’t do irony, and we can. The fifth is that the Germans can’t do irony, either (and we still can). The sixth is that irony and cynicism are interchangeable. The seventh is that it’s a mistake to attempt irony in emails and text messages, even while irony characterises our age, and so do emails. And the eighth is that “post-ironic” is an acceptable term – it is very modish to use this, as if to suggest one of three things: i) that irony has ended; ii) that postmodernism and irony are interchangeable, and can be conflated into one handy word; or iii) that we are more ironic than we used to be, and therefore need to add a prefix suggesting even greater ironic distance than irony on its own can supply. None of these things is true.Now, after all that effort numbering and sub-numbering the points, I’m going to deal with them in the wrong order. That isn’t ironic, it’s just a bit sloppy.