the Jarvik-heart article: sob-prose
Her tragic, untimely, and, some might say, cruelly ironic fate, however, has been the subject of the all too frequent silence needless tragedies are buried beneath when they cast the callous misunderstanding of public officials in the negative light of public knowledge.
Context
Steeply's only putative published article is written entirely in the fake-sincere register of tabloid pathos — "searching and fearless journalistic doggedness," "medical science's awe inspiring march forward" — and the prose is itself a parody of sincerity, sob-copy so manufactured that its earnestness reads as its own kind of irony. The tell is "some might say, cruelly ironic fate": the piece reaches for the word ironic to describe the event even as its own manner is the purest counterfeit of feeling, emotion outsourced to boilerplate. It's the mirror image of the sidewalk crowd — where they can't hear real feeling under a cliché, Moment can't produce a sentence that isn't cliché all the way down.