I have CNN.com in my Google Reader, though as time wears on I find myself wondering why I would do such a thing. It has articles with consistently terrible ledes and some really terrible commentary, which for some reason people are getting paid to write.

Their latest assault on the dignity of the English language is written by Roland Martin, who is apparently a nationally syndicated columnist. It is an article complaining about Valentine’s Day, which is super original! It’s pretty much the same sort of anti-Valentine’s rant you hear from anyone who has ever been burned by some of its more absurd adherents, or felt that roses are overpriced, or complained that society felt they needed a special day to demonstrate their love for their significant other. I’m not a devoted adherent but I don’t personally feel the day needs abolishing or anything. But the article bothered me, so here is my little defense of the holiday.

The article starts off with the false assertion that it was “created by rabid retailers who needed a major shopping day between Christmas and Easter in order to give people a reason to spend money.” Which is, you know, completely false!

Valentine’s Day is a Saint’s Day, for one. It became associated with romantic love in the High Middle Ages, before Christmas and Easter were shopping days. So, nice fact-checking there, Roland Martin! By which I mean ‘oh you appear to be completely wrong.‘

Then he does the traditional “I love my wife but why do I have to buy her expensive roses today?” thing. Answer? You don’t, actually! Society doesn’t really expect much of you. But it’s a day traditionally associated with romantic love, and do you really do nice things for her every day of the year? If money is tight or you want to avoid crowds, it’s still a nice time to watch a nice quiet movie with the missus and maybe have some candlelit dinner at home. Is there something wrong with having a day set aside out of the year for this? Anyone who’s likely to do it spontaneoussly is going to do it whether or not there’s a holiday on.

What really gets me is that this guy is getting paid, probably substantial sums of money, to complain about Valentine’s Day, without fact checking, inaccurately, and unoriginally–everyone who’s ever complained about it has said the same thing, and they have said it better, and without the self-righteous “I’m getting paid to do this!” sort of attitude. And it wasn’t polluting my feed reader.