ann arbor is overrated.

In a column about the importance of choosing one’s words carefully that appeared in today’s Daily, the columnist repeats a tempting but inaccurate canard - that the situations in Alanis Morrissette’s song “Ironic” are not actually ironic. But situational irony, usually defined simply as a contrast between expectation and outcome, is a broad enough category to encompass just about everything that happens in the song, at least as far as we can remember. We’re not sure exactly why this “fact” is so remarkably persistent, but we feel it our duty to debunk it wherever it may appear.

(Note: this entry has been edited to remove the columnist’s name.)