The Neanderthal Controversy Signals the Return of Derp
The flap over Biden comparing governors to Neanderthals takes us back to an earlier era of stupidity in American politics
Out of the foggy mists of time, Neanderthals emerged this week. With them came the dim outlines of a world far distant from the present: the world of 2012.
Suddenly, it is the era of derp again. Derp was the defining complaint about politics in the early teens of the 21st century. With a relatively prosperous country and both parties nominating well-disciplined candidates who were clearly qualified for the Oval Office, the 24-hour cable news cycle needed to cover something. So we got “derp,” a word coined by the creators of South Park that became used to describe the unbearable stupidity of political fights happening for their own sake.
When an entire day in March 2012 was devoted to harsh criticism of Barack Obama for making a historically inaccurate joke about Rutherford B. Hayes’ disdain for the telephone, that was derp. There were no single-issue Rutherford B. Hayes voters. No one criticizing Obama cared about Rutherford B. Hayes. For that matter, no one defending Obama did, either. It was the type of phony juiced-up controversy that defined politics in an era when the defining question asked of…
