Things weren’t going well for sincerity even before Hallmark strip-mined it down to muck. Lionel Trilling pronounced it dead some 40 years ago. Snark and irony have long had more cultural cachet. Among its many pitfalls is that the more you seek or proclaim it, the less sincere you seem. (Only politicians have yet to get the message.) Another small problem: if people truly did say what was in their hearts on a regular basis, marriages would rupture, friendships would founder and no one would ever sit through a faculty meeting again.