deLint & Steeply: the creed through the sneer

Schtitt's wholly sincere creed delivered in the most sardonic register available — and the sneer is the delivery-system, not a denial. deLint means every word of it (seeing instead of being seen, the chew-proof inside place, "it's never about being seen. It's never") and can only say it through "babe" every other line, a "cold-eyed shard of a smile," a laugh Steeply hears as "mucoidal," a flat "Don't kid yourself, babe." The register point is that the cynicism isn't wrapped around the sincerity as disguise; it's the only voice deLint owns for the thing he most believes. A coach who'd stake the kids' souls on self-transcendence and would rather die than say so with a straight face — earnestness that can survive only inside a sneer. (The seeing/being-seen pedagogy is the-body-tennis's; the register slice is the sincere-creed-through-cynical-delivery.)