Setting The Paper Of Record Straight

This Sunday morning was spent like many others. I woke up, shoved the nearest edible item in my mouth and turned on my computer to read the New York Times. Not to follow the passage of the health care bill or learn about Iran's nuclear program. Instead, I clicked on the Styles tab and got right to the fluff, namely Modern Love. I don't know whether I like the column better when it's something touching and original (this article about being a lonely Mormon missionary) or an emotional train wreck I'm reading about at a safe distance (almost everything else.)

So imagine my joy to find out from Pop Culture Junk Mail that Slate has been running a series of Modern Love rebuttals, where the subjects of the essays finally get their revenge and get to see their side in print. It's funny to imagine the possibilities of a feedback loop here. Someone writes an article about how they had to ditch their emotionally stunted boyfriend, that boyfriend writes about what it felt like to see his life in print, then the original author can write about what it felt like to read the reaction, and then... and so on and so on until somebody makes a movie or at least gets a book deal.

But the reality is actually more interesting. I particularly liked the first one, which reminded me of the intro to this recent episode of This American life, which pointed out that - unlike pretty much every other section of the paper - the weddings and celebrations page doesn't have to present a fair and balanced take on the facts. Or even try. The first husband is not called for comment when his wife marries the man she left him for, he becomes an anecdote. The drug-addicted daughter doesn't get to give her reasons, no when she's just the mechanism for personal growth.

So when you read Modern Love, you begin to feel as if the authors are piggybacking off the objective reputation the rest of the paper has earned. Their hope that if they're published, their version of the break-up or the parenting crisis will become definitive, almost sweats off the page. It's nice to see that torn down in messy essays that don't have the Times polish and which remind us that someone's got to pay for our emotional epiphanies.