Aaron Boyd
2 min readDec 17, 2020

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Everything about the framing of this article makes me throw up in my mouth.

I get it: You wanted to do a timely listicle on an interesting subject and wanted to tie it in with current events to hook the reader. So you start with a broad intro, contextualize it in terms of how it relates to the national zeitgeist, then transition to the more specific elements of the list itself. That's Nightmare Of Modern Content Writing 101.

But tonally, this is some truly appalling Both Sidesism.

The single most dangerous narrative any journalist can perpetuate, directly or indirectly, is that this issue is in any way morally/politically/legally/logically symmetrical, where both sides have equally valid points.

It's not. As is pretty much always the case with Trump, one side has close to zero redeeming qualities because they're in a death cult run by an insane game show host that just realized he can pay off his credit card bills by casually dismantling the world's oldest democracy.

Which is why, tonally, this piece sounds like you're writing about Taylor Swift and Beyonce having a mayonnaise-eating contest.

"Ohh, Biden took a dig at Trump by pointing out he is literally attempting to end democracy, but Trump got his licks in on Twitter when he shot back 'SLEEPY JOE (false president) is So Old (like a Loser)'! Biden retaliated with a zinger about how 300,000 Americans are dead for no reason, but Trump came back swingin' by Retweeting a Michael Flynn speech calling for the suspension of the Constitution and the imposition of martial law!

Well, both parties have their own ideas about things, and Presidents don't always see eye to eye. But these sorts of spats are totally common throughout American history, as we'll soon see, so feel free to accept this as normal. Here are nine other Presidential feuds that are definitely comparable:

1) John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were sometimes not friends. "

etc.

Look, I know you're just doing a job and trying to burn this shit out as quick as you can because that's the dystopian meatgrinder of industrialized writing. Maybe you don't feel like you have a responsibility to your readers because this is "just" a listicle and not a serious piece of longform journalism. But you do. Things as small as a mild, neutral tone can subtly contribute to normalizing things that shouldn't be normalized. It's not your fault that our national discourse has sunk this low, but here we are anyway.

Oh, but as far as the content of the article itself: Pretty cool, I guess.

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