By Danny Quinney
I think it is important to point out that of all the contributors to this website, I’m the dumbest. I say that, not to brag, but to let you know I’m aware of my dumbery. I ain’t no highly educated man. See what I mean? I just used a double negative (seriously, what an idiot). Despite my dumbery, I am just smart enough to recognize inconsistencies in the media.
I have always been aware of them, but when I recently read an article by Tim Groseclose, it really brought them to the forefront of my mind. In addition to the article, Mr. Groseclose is an author of “Left Turn: How Liberal Media Bias Distorts the American Mind.” In his article he references an essay appearing in this years August 10th edition of the New York Times magazine titled, “Two-Minus-One Pregnancy”.
Apparently an expectant mother, “after choosing not to endure the extra burden of raising twins” decides to “reduce to a singleton.” Awwww…Isn’t that cute? “Reduce to a singleton”, you can almost imagine skipping through a field of daisies, hugging your favorite “My Pretty Pony”, while listening to the “Care Bears Christmas”, can’t you? The fact that the Doctor injects a long needle filled with potassium chloride into the chest of the baby, quickly killing it, the body of the baby shrivels the remainder of the pregnancy and is removed during the birth of the other twin is just a nifty little side note.
Ew. When I say it like that it isn’t really nifty at all.
Hmmmm?
Mr. Groseclose then goes on to show how the media uses cute and fluffy words to describe things that aren’t so pleasant about abortion (Mr. Groseclose, of course, never used the words “cute” and “fluffy” – those are my contributions – remember I’m trying to dummy things down here). He explains his book, “contains a systematic statistical analysis to document the bias in the abortion language of journalists”. Now, to be fair, I’m really not sure what any of those words mean. But I do know that in my lifetime we have gone from “Deaf” to “The Hearing Impaired”, “Prisoner” to “Correctional Faculties Inmate”, and “Stewardess” to “Flight attendant”. Honestly, it has to stop. Especially from the media. The Elderly aren’t “Chronologically Advanced”, the Dead aren’t “Living Impaired”, an Abortion isn’t a “Near-Life Experience” and I am not “Fecally Plenary” (full of crap).
Mr. Groseclose closes his article by saying, “No matter what one’s view on abortion, one can’t deny that “twin reduction” and partial-birth abortion involve gruesome and ghastly procedures. It’s time that the media—when describing these procedures, as well as abortion policy in general—began using more direct and accurate language.”
Brilliant.
I’ll end my article like this: Mary Poppins was right. A spoon full of sugar really does help the medicine go down. But as a society we have been force fed sugar for too long. I, for one, am sugared out. Can’t the media realize once and for all that we are all grown ups? We can handle big people words. Isn’t it time we call a spade a shovel?