The humorist James Thurber once differentiated between a laugh and a New Yorker laugh. With the New Yorker, the intention is never for a coarse guffaw. The publication aims only for elegant chuckles. At least, I remember reading that Thurber said this. I can’t find the quote anywhere, and now I’m wondering if I’m having a false memory.

I was reminded of this Thurber anecdote (if this is indeed something he said; let's just roll with it) Monday evening after I read a New Yorker article titled, “ Brett Kavanaugh, Sportswriter.”

On first blush, the article, which offers excruciating analyses of the judge’s sports writing from his days reporting for the Yale Daily News, seems to be written in earnest. It also seems to be totally insane. Many on social media seemed to think so.

The article isn’t crazy, though the following passages suggest otherwise:



Could there be hints of potential Supreme Court rulings under headlines like “Elis Trounce Jaspers” and “Hoopsters Head West”? The question was put to some experts. Steve Rushin, who has written for Sports Illustrated for the past three decades, saw a clue in Kavanaugh’s language. “No one was ever shooting room temperature,” Rushin observed. “Everyone was either blazing or ice-cold. In one single sentence: ‘As torrid as Yale’s shooting had been twenty-four hours earlier, it was ice cold in this contest.’ ” Rushin suggested this might indicate “a kind of good-evil, hot-cold, Manichean world view.”



And then there’s this:



Kavanaugh the sportswriter seemed unwilling to challenge the status quo, noted J. A. Adande, who runs the sports-journalism program at Northwestern’s Medill School. “His tendency to approach his stories from the angles set forth by the coach indicates that he doesn’t want to buck authority figures,” Adande wrote in an e-mail. “It would make sense if he supported unlimited Presidential power.”



Lastly, there are these quotes from Harvard Law professor Laurence Tribe (who actually seems a bit unhinged since President Trump was elected):



Tribe … zeroed in on the lead sentence in Kavanaugh’s account of a midseason game against Cornell: “In basketball, as in few other team sports, it is possible for one person to completely dominate a game.” Was this a harmless observation? Tribe noted, “Kavanaugh’s seeming fascination with single-player domination might be a muscular view of executive power.” On the other hand, he found a departure from Kavanaugh’s typical jurisprudence in “Dartmouth Rally Upends Streak.” “Kavanaugh complained that the refs let the game ‘get completely out of control’ as Dartmouth players ‘consistently hammered’ a Yalie ‘without the whistle blowing’ once,” Tribe said. “One might see in that a rare early condemnation of judicial restraint.”

[...]

Tribe … thought Kavanaugh’s language “read almost like theatre reviews.” He picked out a few phrases: “lit up,” “bruising inside defense.” “Kavanaugh could be one of the Court’s more colorful writers, a group that’s now down to Kagan and—well, just Kagan,” Tribe said. He imagined a future Supreme Court dissent: “Before half a minute of his argument time had elapsed, the Solicitor General hit a hanging curve ball thrown by the Notorious RBG for a four-hundred-and-twenty-five-foot homer.”



The reader gets through most of the article with the impression that the New Yorker actually collected straight-faced analysis from sports and legal experts on Kavanaugh’s sports writing.

That is, it looks that way until you encounter this quote: "I would’ve expected more color and humor, particularly for a student newspaper—for goodness’ sake, have some fun, kids!” Yale Law School William Eskridge, Jr. said. “Contrast him with Justice Scalia. Scalia would’ve been the Howard Cosell of sportswriters, but even better.”

That bit about Scalia is the tell. This article is meant to poke fun at the tedious tea leaf-reporting that goes into covering major political figures, including likely Supreme Court justices.

It's just satire. Not the guffawing kind, but the pleased-chuckle kind. In other words, it's a New Yorker laugh.