What's up with the excessive use of the term "perfect storm" lately? Just in the last 24 hours, I have heard several commentators refer to the genesis of the southern California wildfires as a perfect storm. On its new show E60, an ESPN interviewee referred to the causes of heightened sports gambling on campus as a perfect storm, as recent pundits have called the mess that it is the Republican presidential field the result of, you guessed it, a perfect storm. A climatologist interviewed on NPR said global warming represents a perfect storm of epochal events coming together at the same time.
Ironically, a perfect storm is actually meant to convey rarity. A perfect storm seldom happens, which is why is is called perfect. By calling everything a perfect storm, we are dramatically missing the point and rendering the term meaningless. It's akin to when the Ford Motor Company usurped the term "quality" to describe its processes and products. It ruined the word.
Besides, the movie by the same name is now seven years old and the deadly storm it evoked is now 16 years old. The point simply underscores how the chattering classes are talking to themselves and, in doing so, mimicking what they hear. What other reason is there to explain why the tired and generally inappropriately used term seems to be everywhere as it moves briskly to the dustbin of cliche?
Ironically, a perfect storm is actually meant to convey rarity. A perfect storm seldom happens, which is why is is called perfect. By calling everything a perfect storm, we are dramatically missing the point and rendering the term meaningless. It's akin to when the Ford Motor Company usurped the term "quality" to describe its processes and products. It ruined the word.
Besides, the movie by the same name is now seven years old and the deadly storm it evoked is now 16 years old. The point simply underscores how the chattering classes are talking to themselves and, in doing so, mimicking what they hear. What other reason is there to explain why the tired and generally inappropriately used term seems to be everywhere as it moves briskly to the dustbin of cliche?