The Purple Prose of Boston

I only got around to reading the Boston Sunday Globe last night. Busy Sunday, what with The Amazing Bob and I motoring down to Fairhaven for a visit with The Green Miles and the fabulous Bethanie.

I love the Globe’s magazine section with Miss Conduct, the back page essay, letters to the editor and even the Dinner with Cupid page. Yeah, I’ve dissed the mag for it’s habit of writing to the über wealthy -- specifically when profiling home renovations. At the same time, while I’m seething, I totes enjoy seeing the pics. Em, maybe this falls into famed hatter, F. Scott Fitzgerald, territory:

The test of a first rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.
F. Scott Fitzgerald, "The Crack-Up", Esquire Magazine (February 1936)

This past Sunday’s big feature?

2013 Bostonians of the Year:
When bombs went off at the Boston Marathon finish line, the crowds fled for safety. But a group of everyday people like Dan Marshall, Natalie Stavas, and Larry Hittinger rushed in to offer whatever help they could. 

‘IN THE SAVANNA OF THE BACK BAY, a few tenths of a mile from the devastation, all the herds were charging toward her. The runners were fleeing something awful, screaming about explosions. The authorities were shouting something urgent, commanding everyone to follow the stampede away from the chaos on Boylston Street.’

The ‘savanna of the Back Bay?’ ‘herds were charging?’ ‘follow the stampede?’
Dude, you are SO reaching here. Hell, this writer’s headed into testosterone heavy, male pattern bodice ripping, Harlequin Romance territory. The prose is, right out of the gate, fluorescent in it’s purpleness.

Our author aspirant has perhaps read too much Hemingway and/or aspires to John Huston  levels of black hearted hunting fantasy.

Bubby, you’re a journalist not a romance novelist for the big gunned and tiny dicked. This is a newspaper. You’re not Hemingway and the Marathon bombing was in no way reminiscent of some magical, ‘manly,’ wild hunt.

Please.

Not only would his opening ‘graph give Radiant Orchid a run for it’s colorants, nowhere was Carlos Arredondo mentioned or even vaguely alluded to.

On the Fox News Latino site (a. Fox has a separate, english language, page with news for Latinos? Because, though we all live in Boston, their world is SO very different from everyone else’s? b. Did Mister Arredondo make headlines on the Fox News for White People site? ) there was this:

He’s being called the Latino cowboy and is being hailed a hero of the Boston bombings

From the Portland (Maine) Press Herald:

He (John Mixon of Ogunquit, Maine) and Carlos Arredondo, the father of a fallen soldier for whom a runner was dedicating the race to, sprinted across the street to the blast site and started ripping away snow fence and scaffolding that separated the crowd from the street.

In the regular Boston Globe from a mid November piece:

Since the bombs exploded at the Boston Marathon, when he rushed from the VIP stands to clear barricades and make a tourniquet from a sweater sleeve that saved Jeff Bauman’s life, the 53-year-old has become the face of Boston Strong, seen by some as an almost mythic embodiment of courage in the face of terror.

OK, I get it. The journo was highlighting a few of the heroes who haven’t been feted big and bold yet. That’s totally fab, cool and admirable but not even an aside? Like ‘You’ve all heard of Carlos Arredondo -- here are a few heroes you may not know.’

Odd.

And then, from our purple loving scrivener:

‘...confidence in those abilities is enough to override the potent countervailing phenomenon known as the “bystander effect,” where people fail to help a stranger in distress because they assume that someone else will.’

Land’s sake muthafucka, do NOT assume this is the reason why ALL unhelping strangers aren't assisting!  You may be too young and/or inexperienced in the ways of the world to understand this very simple concept -- SOMEtimes inaction is borne of shock, fear and horror. People can become frozen -- incapable of much, if anything, beyond escape. Not always is it because people are selfish, doltish shits. We don't think, so much, we react.

Stavas says she was simply reacting.

These are just a few of my gripes with this piece which was, seriously, the worst excuse of Sunday Mag feature writing I’ve ever read.