3469 Catching up

Thursday, February 23, 2011

The mystery of love and life and death is really grander and more glorious
than human beings can grasp, much less legislate.
-- Fenton Johnson, 1996 --

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I get angry at misleading headlines. Some headline writers oughta be sued!

"They" know a lot of people read only headlines. People skim headlines and read only the few stories that pique (note that's not "peek") their interest. Otherwise they get all their "news" and form their views from headlines.

For example:
Headline 1 - "Democrats protest religious freedom hearing". From this you might conclude that the Dems don't care about religious freedom and don't want it discussed. The real story:

"Democrats [are] saying they had been denied the ability to present witnesses who might support the government stance or speak for the rights of women to reproductive health coverage. They asked why women weren't better represented among the 10 witnesses at the hearing.

... there are also some Catholic groups and individuals who have come out in support of the president's approach. They were not there at Thursday's hearing."

That's an entirely different story from what the headline implies. The Democrats felt that the committee was not interested in women's views or in any testimony that was unlikely to agree with their foregone conclusion.

Headline 2 - "Bobby Brown Kicked Out of Whitney Houston’s Funeral". According to the story that followed, he was NOT "kicked out". He had been invited, and arrived with several people, was seated, and then was asked to change seats, to move, three times! The third time he was asked to relocate, he said to hell with this sh*t, went to the casket and paid his respects, and left. Nobody even suggested he leave. It was his decision, because he was by then getting angry, felt harassed, and didn't want to create a scene. So he simply left.

So why did the headline writer feel it necessary to say he was "kicked out"? That is inexcusable.

Headline 3 - "Not brushing teeth leads to cavities, brushing too often breaks teeth". Hmmm. From this one might conclude that brushing too often weakens the enamel or something.

Nope. In fact, "too often" has nothing to do with it. The real story (which few people would have read) is that there's some electric rotating toothbrush that's defective, and the spinning head can snap off and break teeth.

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Latest Duh - I read, not just overheard, this person WROTE it, that someone had won something "by a hare's breath". It took me a minute to translate that to "a hair's breadth".

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I am no longer watching the Repulsican debates. It's too scary. It seems like they're all using Rush Limbaugh's research staff now. The sheer weight of disinformation is staggering.
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