Bad Headline Theater

Dear liberal friends.  We had a bad election.  We are going to have a bad run here and the conservatives are going to do a lot of stuff that makes us angry.  At least fifty percent of the time, our anger will be justified.

Some of the time, though, we need to make sure we understand what is making us angry.

Earlier this week, a friend posted this article with the headline “Dino’s Gyros Cans Employee who Took off for ‘Day Without Immigrants’ Protest.”

Now it is true Dino’s Gyros canned an employee who didn’t show up for work and it is true that employee was taking part in the day without immigrants protest.  This headline would make you think Dino’s Gyros were Capitalist fucks who didn’t give a shit about causes important to their employees.

And let’s be fair – they may be.

The truth, which we see if we read the whole article, is that they admitted they should not have fired him because he was participating in a legal strike and they offered him his job back with a raise.  He turned it down.

Then there is this story which has the headline “Oklahoma Legislature Just Passed the Most Oppressive law Against Women in History.”

I checked the great seal for the state of Oklahoma and it doesn’t say “fuck women” anywhere. Not even in Latin.

In this case, the law in question is pretty horrible.  It requires a woman to get permission from the father before she has an abortion, which is some seriously misogynistic bullshit because it takes a woman’s control of her own body away from her.

But – and given the headline this is super important –  the law hasn’t passed yet.  Later in the article you will read that it has only been passed out of committee.

And believe me, if the legislature actually passes this law as it is written, I’m going to be bringing it up again.  And I will find an opportunity to refer to Oklahoma lawmakers as “controlling gibbons who care about the lives and health of women only slightly less than they care about the lives and health of babies once they are born” when that happens.

All the bad laws in the world don’t justify a headline that is demonstrably untrue.  In a world where the term “fake news” is used as a weapon, we have to be doubly sure we are precise.

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