Originally Posted By: ireckon
Originally Posted By: Bingley
Unless you can provide evidence for this by quoting a damning passage from the article, I'll have to regard this as one of those psychological tricks I used to play on my classmates ("I'll bet you are not brave enough to eat that disgusting worm!").


Sure, simply look at the first example the writer gave. It's a woman who has "a large generator, portable heaters, water tanks, and a two-year supply of freeze-dried food that her sister recently gave her as a birthday present."

That's the writer's opening example for his criticism. Apparently, there is nothing else "unusual" to say about the woman. That's it. That type of preparation seems to be laughable to the writer. My initial reaction to that example was the woman sounds like me, just with more stuff. I only have about 6 months of toilet paper. LOL

You may be uncomfortable being considered one of "them". I, on the other hand, am not.


I am afraid you are not making sense, kind sir. The request is for you to furnish evidence that the writer regards me as "one of them." Instead, you point me to some woman's list of supplies. That's a logical problem. Unless you are able to find a sentence that says something like "anyone who prepares for any sort of emergencies are idiots of elephantine proportion," I am afraid you are not going to convince me.

There is a second logical problem. Somehow you construe the list as ridiculing the woman. Again, I don't see any evidence for this. On the contrary, I see a reporter attempting to convey respectfully to his/her audience the sort of emergency preparation that is the subject of the article. Let me emphasize "respectfully." The list is meant to be a sample, to give the readers a taste. It is not meant to be exhaustive.

The nature of journalism is such that even good reporting will never fully represent you as you want the world to see yourself. You will always have to put up with a bit of disjointedness. The news story will never look at things through your perspective. Maybe that's what some people who don't like the article are reacting to. But I do think, given the limitations of reporting, the article has done a decent job in providing a neutral, respectful view of its subject. Let's be fair.