Extreme reaction to Home Makeover

I could not for the life of me understand why a woman was screaming at me – chanting, actually, at the top of her lungs – the word extreme.

She obviously was extremely unhappy with our coverage of the “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” build in Tallahassee last week, though I think she was more upset with ABC for only building one larger home instead of two or three smaller ones. I think she wanted me to do something about that.

You just can’t please everyone. Doing something nice just isn’t what it used to be. Several posters online were outraged by something about the community effort: wrong type of house, wrong family, wrong this or wrong that.

This lady wasn’t alone in her criticisms; she just took the cake: first place in the Boorish Behavior category.

By the end of her voice mail, I was worried about her health and actually feeling a little sorry for her. I had to assume she has a lot of other issues in her life and calling the newspaper editor to scream was just an outlet for her pent up anger. I’m here for you.

There are things that anger me, too. For example, the economy is in shambles and the Legislature opens today. My retirement has been moved back from age 56 to age 83 and I’m fearful our lawmakers will do something to move that to age 91. At this rate, I will still have to work long after I’m dead and gone.

No wonder so many people in our community were look for a reason to feel good about something.

By this morning, thousands upon thousands of people will have clicked on our photos, videos and stories of the EMHE on Tallahassee.com. They have viewed about a million pages. That’s an extremely large amount of traffic.

Think about this: Nothing we have done, save coverage of Tropical Storm Fay, has generated as much reader-viewer interest as this.

From start to now, coverage of the Rachel Hoffman tragedy did not generate this much traffic.

Nor has coverage of the Cheryl Dunlap case.

Nope, not the election either.

This was bigger than any single FSU football game, though a win in a big game might easily top EMHE, if that ever happens.

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