Romance is an exaggeration and glorification of what, looked at closely, is at best mundane and at worst ugly or disreputable.
Journalists used to romanticize war by closing their eyes to the horror; now they romanticize its victims by looking at nothing but the horror.
Likewise, at its high end, recruiting is a classy business of consultants parading around in suits and speaking mouthfuls of jargon. But at its core are name miners, spies, burrowing deep into enemy territory struggling to get those who know where the targets are to identify them.
Source: James Bowman, Getting It Right, New Criterion