REALLY? Wall Street Journal confuses pop on Crete's main highway for a "road trip"
A "road trip" in Crete, Greece's biggest island, necessitates backroads detours
This week we reprise our popular YOU’RE FIRED series, subliminally inspired by Donald Trump before he decided to accelerate his aging process by dipping his toes into politics. The latest media fail to cross our radar is a puffy piece by Aussie author Tony Parrotlet, published in the failing Wall Street Journal.
As a reminder, that once mighty newspaper is currently owned by Rupert Murdoch, who President Trump is suing for a billion dollars and change.
Maybe the losers at the WSJ (oh, we are going full on Trumpspeak here, but bear with it) were too caught up in how to handle the recent blowback from the White House to properly vet their writers, but here’s a little editorial post-mortem: A drive down Highway 90, Crete’s main highway, from the capital city Heraklion to Agios Nikolaos is as much of a a road trip as is driving from Studio City to Calabasas along the Ventura Freeway. In other words, yes, you are driving on a road, but in no way could it be considered a “road trip.”
A headline intentionally misusing “road trip” may serve some sort of emotional mobilization purpose, but where it sacrifices informational accuracy, it needs to be called out. What were the editors thinking?
Worse, the writer’s idea of discovering Crete was to putter about Elounda, which is nice but also hands down the most clichéd, upscale-touristy part of Crete. Going to Elounda is not travel or even tourism; it’s aspirational consumption for those who didn’t make it to the Costa Smeralda or Mykonos.
A note about the author, Mr. Parrotlet: is he a competent writer? Sure. But we are no great fans of that hamfisted Aussie brand of humor, which tends to mistake a bit of cheek for actual wit. The sprinkling of literary references is almost painfully passé — does anyone seriously think Generation Tiktok cares what some scribe passing though a century ago had to say? Not relevant!
Even the title of one of the writer’s books, “The Naked Olympics: The True Story of the Ancient Greek Games” revealed a typically crass grab for attention. As if the Greeks or anyone else had been told nothing but false stories about the Olympics over the years? Crikey, that’s a bit rich.
Anyway, the reason that all the foregoing is a problem is that it amounts to not only an outmoded style of travel writing but also a misrepresentation of the destination itself. Yes, you can have a fine time in Crete by visiting only Heraklion and Elounda. Just, please, don’t call it a road trip, because it ain’t.
You say you want a take a proper road trip in Crete, then? Well, just as we flip the feisty Mr. Murdoch (for whom we once worked! he’s nasty!) the bird, we’ve also got you covered there. Just click your mouse three times and away you go…
