Friday, December 10, 2010

HuffPo and the Spectrum of American Life.

Not sure why it took so long for a news site to cobble together a divorce section, but editors at The Huffington Post have finally done so, and my hat is off to them.

The only thing that enthralls people more than a good love story is a good love implosion, which is why it makes perfect sense that, according to Ariana Huffington, many of the divorce section's readers are actually married.

So while most of the left column of HuffPo Divorce contains practical headlines designed to serve divorced readers ("Is Your Ex-Husband Your BFF?", "Lawyers Love to Hear You Talk"), the center column is dedicated mostly to stoking the schadenfreude associated with watching others' marriages dissolve (Eva, Reese, Courteney) and to studies that might give one the false but satisfying sense that being armed with more statistics can help in avoiding the same fate. (In case you were intrigued by that arresting "DON'T Marry Your Soul Mate" headline in the image above, I'll give you the short version: Don't marry your soul mate -- unless you are rich.)

But the best part about the debut of the divorce section is that it adds another facet to the picture of American life that emerges when you scan only the section touts on the HuffPo front page:

MORE ENTERTAINMENT
MORE POLITICS
MORE RELIGION*
MORE TECH
MORE DIVORCE
MORE SPORTS
MORE FOOD
MORE MEDIA
MORE LIVING*
MORE STYLE
MORE EDUCATION*

I think if you put the word LESS in front of the topics with asterisks, you'd have it about right.

4 comments :

  1. Everyone knows divorced people ready print. Duh, HuffPo.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Except for the ones who read Kindles

    ReplyDelete
  3. Kindles don't work for divorced people. Literally.

    ReplyDelete

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