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Two Vastly Different Headlines, Same Story
By david_yamada on Sat, 01/30/2010 - 9:02am
This morning's boston.com ran this headline and subhead describing yesterday's Presidential appearance at the Republican Congressional retreat in Baltimore:
Obama, GOP exchange scoldings in rare debate
President Obama denied he was a Bolshevik, Republicans denied they were obstructionists, and both sides denied they were to blame for toxic politics. (New York Times)
Here's the headline and subhead on nytimes.com describing the same event:
Off Script, Obama and the G.O.P. Vent Politely
By PETER BAKER and CARL HULSE
President Obama attended a House Republican retreat for a robust debate on policies and politics with the opposition, a rarity in the scripted world of American politics.
Strange thing is, both papers ran largely the same story by Times' reporters Peter Baker and Carl Hulse.
Yet, Boston.com characterized the retreat as a continuing extension of gridlock politics. Nytimes.com characterized it as a sharp but genuine exchange.
Personally, I think the nytimes.com headline writers were much more spot on. For political and policy junkies, it was a riveting one-plus exchange. (You can find it on YouTube and C-Span.) However, the boston.com headline writers were drawing directly from the lede paragraph of the Baker-Hulse article, and therefore one could argue their sense of the article was more "accurate."
In any event, this is another example of how the media shapes our perception of political discussion in America, in this case via differing themes in headlines and subheads.
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Comments
More of this please
Love him or hate him you can thank Scott Brown for this. Maybe now we can get some dialogue and a hint of civility in DC. The tone sounded like exactly what the doctor ordered. There were hints that both sides agreed to listen to each other rather than the usual rhetoric where they just talk past each other.
Let's hope so. The GOP needs
Let's hope so.
The GOP needs to buck their leadership and lose the talking points and actually help govern. Politics isn't a zero sum game, their political strategy of no is just as harmful to them in the long run.
The Q&A with Obama and Congressional Republicans
is pretty amazing to watch. The CSPAN link is here, second video.
TV coverage of the Q&A on MSNBC is here.
Having watched the debate and then the analysis, I would say it was one of the best debates about policy and politics since the election and likely much longer. One key concept is raised and that is the nature of our polemics - in demonizing the opposition and characterizing their policy as death camps and them as Nazis or Bolsheviks - you don't leave yourself much room to negotiate when you're inclined to support the measure.
This is one debate if you're interested in politics, you should watch from beginning to end, at least once.
Excuse me...what you should
Excuse me...what you should be saying is...say what you will about the Tea Party movement, it got Obama begging for help from Republicans. No more closed door meetings without input from Republicans. No more bullying a Healthcare plan that 58% of Americans have no interest in and that only 38% of Americans support. Scott Brown was the candidate of the Tea Party movement. Without the Tea Party, it's your typical corrupt Democrats business as usual.
I had to laugh when Obama said this was a centrist bill. You can hear them laughing in the crowd. You can see the anger of this arrogant president. Scott Brown is a beatdown on Obama and instead of being humble, Obama comes out as angry man. Obama says that the Republicans were ginning up their constituents...excuse me but it was the congressional republicans that wanted to roll over for Obama and it took the Tea Party movement to whip them in line to be against healthcare.
Watch the video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sVXkg3bWmbY
Right of Richard Nixon isn't
Right of Richard Nixon isn't centrist - it's right. Our opinion of what's "centrist" is way off - from 30 years ago and from the rest of the world. At least Nixon included a public option.
Next time your hear republicans and Tea Party activists complain
about the national debt, acknowledge that most of the debt vilified by Republicans happened on the watch of a Republican president and Congress that never paid for “two wars, two tax cuts, and an expensive prescription drug program.”
the deficit
Of the projected $2 trillion swing into the red between the Clinton surplus and 2012, some 33 percent could be attributed to Bush legislation and another 20 percent to Bush-initiated spending (Iraq, TARP) continued by Obama. Only 7 percent of the deficit could be credited to the Obama stimulus bill and 3 percent to his other initiatives. The business cycle accounts for the other 37 percent.