Words matter
From Jon Chait, who is very good with words:
Today's Wall Street Journal editorial page has one of those sentences that make the Wall Street Journal editorial page such a daily delight: "Last week President Obama sanctioned 'reconciliation,' a complex tactic that would jam ObamaCare into law on sheer power politics." The beautiful thing about this sentence is that it has no argument (nor is there any support for the argument in the sentences that surround it.) It's sheer hand-waving, an attempt to muster every adjective in the writer's power to make the process of voting sound frightening and sinister.
Likewise, I could write, "This morning, controversial foreign billionaire media boss Rupert Murdoch gave his cronies the go-ahead to chop down and mutilate hundreds of trees, pulverize the carcasses until they were rendered unrecognizable, and then order their underlings to fill the pages with propaganda for the business class, with any refusal to comply punished by the forfeiture of wages and access to health care." But that would be a fairly slanted way to describe the process of publishing a newspaper.
Quite.
By
Ezra Klein
|
March 8, 2010; 11:39 AM ET
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Posted by: rlj1 | March 8, 2010 11:50 AM | Report abuse
I believe no less than a half-dozen Republican lawmakers in the last 2 weeks have used some variation of the word "jam" to describe how HCR will be delivered through the throats and into the patriotic stomachs of conservative Americans.
So not only is this an instance of clearly biased language, it's adopting REPUBLICAN PARTY talking points to do so.
RIP, WaPo's scant remaining journalistic integrity.
Posted by: BigTunaTim | March 8, 2010 12:18 PM | Report abuse
Jon Stewart had a great bit last week about Fox News' supposed "news programs" adopting terminology used by its "entertainment programs" (read: the shows everyone associates as being Fox News), including describing reconciliation as "jamming" the legislation through.
Posted by: MosBen | March 8, 2010 12:23 PM | Report abuse
Isn't the WSJ supposed to have a somewhat informed readership? The editorial Chait cites could just as easily have said "Sip Kool-Aid now." Then Peggy Noonan could take up a half page explaining the down home qualities of all Kool-Aid flavors, and the tragic hatred of Kool-Aid by today's Democrats.
Posted by: bdballard | March 8, 2010 12:27 PM | Report abuse
Did Marc Thiessen ghost-write that WSJ editorial, by chance?
Posted by: slag | March 8, 2010 12:47 PM | Report abuse
One of my friends pointed out to me today, that the Republicans used to be for reconciliation before they were against it.
Posted by: VictorGalis | March 8, 2010 1:37 PM | Report abuse
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I have said over and over again that WaPo uses adjectives to draw people to articles without really "tellling the truth". Words do matter.