Letters to the Editor
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How do you define a few drops as a Shit Storm?
Carol LLyod writes "But talk about stirring up a marital shit storm! Outraged readers call Eslinger about every name in the book -- pompous, selfish, clueless, condescending, adolescent, rigid, unconvincing, infuriating, weak, ignorant, annoying, presumptuous and stupid -- to repeat but a few."
As of the time Carol's post went live. The Newsweek essay had a total of 20 comments.
8 praised the ariticle, 9 opposed it and 3 were blank or repeats. Two of the negative responses read like they were the same person.
This doesn't qualify as a shit storm in my book, but a near even split.
Maybe Lloyd exaggerates the response to make her own essay more interesting (not necessary, it could stand on its own).
Or maybe she's conflating the overall uproar when marriage is questioned with this particular essay.
Either way, such hyperbole irritates me, especially when it's made part of the thesis. It verges on outrage mining. She says the essay "doesn't seem terribly radical" even as she's priming people to read it in a state of agitation.
This strikes me as dishonest treatment of a thoughtful essay. I'm sure in a few hours there might be a real shit storm in the comments, but this will Lloyd will have been the one of the instigators, not the observers.
It depresses me, because this type of dishonest drama-mongering undermines a valid argument against weddings.
I don't really see how this rhetorical trick is different from Jerry Springer/Faux News style sensationalism.