Being a Tourist is OK. Thanks CNN: An Essay
Bryan Pirolli | Friday, September 8, 2017 
When I read this article on CNN, I thought it was some sort of archived piece from the Victorian era. I had visions of boarding a steamboat, smoke puffing from the funnels, women with parasols waving kerchiefs to lovers as men walked with canes up the gangplank discussing the absurdity of being a tourist. Surely in 2017 a reputable news site wouldn’t be publishing such an unbelievably thoughtless attempt at an essay that delves into an issue that has been so extensively discussed in the past century, right?
“Tourist,” like “tacky,” seems to have become a dirty word," the author writes.
There it was, the beginning to a reductive and poorly researched argument of why it’s OK to be a tourist. What was missing was any context or research to justify this claim, highlighting the quality of journalism CNN sometimes accepts (I’ve written for them, so I can be critical). As a journalist and researcher myself, I was expecting a bit more.
The word “tourist” is not newly pejorative. Let me make that clear right now. And even though I agree with the writer that, indeed, it's just fine to be a tourist, I think we need to think more deeply about what that really means.
