This is How the Machine Works
The basic idea is to take a thesis that’s ambiguous between the trivially true (some women would do well to be somewhat less picky about the men they date) to the sweeping and offensive (feminists are blinding you ladies to the fact that you need to marry the first halfway decent man you can find before your ovaries shrivel!!!!) precisely because pushing the envelop beyond what’s defensible will create more “buzz.â€
-Matthew Yglesias on Lori Gottlieb’s ridiculous (and debunked) book Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr Good Enough based on an earlier Atlantic article by Gottlieb.
He could have been talking about the entry of Palin into our politics as well.
