6 Headlines That Prove The Media Doesn't Understand Politics
Now that Hillary Clinton has officially thrown her hat into the presidential ring, the rest of us are gearing up for a year and a half of Facebook blocking and artful misdirection when politics comes up at the dinner table. The media, on the other hand, is already hard at work figuring out how to get as much traffic mileage as possible out of every political gaffe.
Here are the first of what will probably be thousands of B.S. political news stories the media refused to get right.
No, A Congressman Didn't Say We Should Feed The Homeless To Wolves
Lots of places have a problem with icky homeless people. According to The Washington Post, Mother Jones, and Bloomberg, Rep. Don Young of Alaska has a solution: Let fucking wolves eat them.
Ah, the old "question mark headline" trick.
Letting newspapers have their cake even when the cake is a lie.
What kind of heartless, disgusting maggot of a human would suggest feeding the country's most vulnerable citizens to wolves? No one, it turns out, but you wouldn't know it from the headlines above. What really happened is Young is from Alaska, a state that knows a thing or two about attacks from gray wolves. So when his fellow congressmen debated the merits of keeping gray wolves on the endangered species list, Young had some strong opinions. One, that states that don't deal with the wolves shouldn't weigh in on the discussion, and two, if they did have wolves, all their homeless people would be dead. It was a joke ... a stupid joke, but a joke.
Which was why everyone sitting in on the session snickered and let Ol' Representative Hobokiller keep running his mouth without thinking twice about whether or not he seriously suggested using wolves to solve homelessness.
No word on his plans for homeless wolves, however.
Wisconsin's Governor Didn't Say Unions Are As Bad As ISIS
Unions are one of those sticky subjects that everyone seems to have an angry, condescending opinion on while knowing shockingly little about them. Apparently, that's what Slate, AOL, and Daily Kos thought was going on when Wisconsin's Gov. Scott Walker, who is possibly gearing up for a presidential run in 2016, said that standing up to union protesters has prepared him to take on the terrorist group ISIS.
Obviously, these guys just want fairer wages and better healthcare.
His actual words were, "If I can take on 100,000 protesters, I can do the same across the world." That's pretty damning, right? But as a different Slate article points out, those headlines gloss over Walker's actual point. He wasn't saying that union protesters are the same thing as terrorists; he was referring to dealing with two difficult tasks.
What he was trying to say, albeit very awkwardly and extremely misguidedly, was that confronting those union protesters was hard, but he succeeded, and he'd do the same with ISIS. It's not like he doesn't know they have guns and that the two tasks would require completely different approaches. We think.
"We just pass a law against terrorist groups. Do I have to do everything?"
Calm Down, Obama Isn't Calling For Mandatory Voting
One of our greatest freedoms in this country is the right to vote. Our second greatest freedom is the right to not give a shit and stay home because it's cold in November. But if you believed CNN and The Washington Times, Obama doesn't care if you don't feel like voting, because he's about to make it mandatory.
Sorry, sisters. Jesus will have to wait.
Except, no, he didn't. What actually happened is that President Obama was talking about how political money influences elections and one possible (and, he emphasized, short-term) solution is to do what other countries do and have mandatory voting. He didn't, at any point, say, "Hey, let's do that." He just said that it's one of many potential ways to fix the problem. Kind of like when you tell your kids that one solution for a clean room is to burn all their belongings but you don't really mean it. (Plus, Obama knows mandatory voting probably wouldn't work anyway.)
When the administration pointed out that the media's version never happened, they didn't issue corrections. Instead, they said that Obama "walked back" and "retreated" from a stance that he never actually had in the first place.
OBAMA INHALES OXYGEN, THEN EXHALES CARBON DIOXIDE. WILL THIS BACKTRACK HURT HIM?
Giuliani Didn't Mean Obama Should Be More Like Cosby In That Way
If there's one celebrity no one envies from the last year, it's Bill Cosby. So why in the absolute hell would former New York mayor and presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani say that he wishes Obama were more like everyone's former favorite sitcom dad?
A position now taken over by the late Uncle Phil, and he wasn't even Will's actual dad.
Sorry, Salon and MSNBC. He wasn't saying that Obama should drug and rape struggling actresses over the course of several decades, because that would be totally insane. What Giuliani actually meant is that he wishes Obama would be more like the Cosby who gave stern talks to the black youth of America from time to time. He didn't want Obama to be like Cosby, he just wants him to say "the kinds of stuff Bill Cosby used to say." Like, "Go to school!" and, "Pull your pants up!" As if no one in the world has passed along the message of the importance of education other than Bill Cosby. It was a terribly timed statement from a guy who also claims the president of the United States "doesn't love America." It's easy to see how Giuliani's judgment is slightly skewed.
For example, 10 minutes later he was heard saying, "I wish the president was also a little more like O.J. in terms of athleticism." (Sources pending.)
A Presidential Candidate Didn't Intentionally Scare The Crap Out Of A Little Girl
Sen. Ted Cruz recently announced that he's running for president in 2016, and what better way to kick off his campaign than screaming at a little girl and making her cry?
Also a great way to start job interviews.
According to media outlets like Mediaite and Raw Story, Cruz shouted at a terrified little girl, "The whole world is on fire!" Presumably while a metal band absolutely shredded behind him. Except that's not what happened at all.
Cruz was getting pretty hyperbolic about Obama's policies and really did say (not shout) that, but the little girl in the crowd wasn't scared. She just asked, "The whole world is on fire?" She wasn't freaking out or crying, just asking what he meant. And Cruz, to his credit, made a pretty decent attempt at soothing her by dishing out some preschool-level political rhetoric. So not a total asshole, horrifying a toddler. Just a guy trying to make a goofy, overwrought point in a room that happened to have a little girl in it.
We'd let him babysit for us, maybe, but no C-SPAN after dark.
The New York Times Didn't Intentionally Crop Bush Out Of Selma March Photos
Recently, Selma, Alabama, commemorated the 50th anniversary of the 1965 Bloody Sunday marches (which, we are assured, had little to nothing to do with U2), where black Civil Rights protesters were beaten by white police officers because the past was super terrible and what the hell was wrong with people back then, anyway?
As part of the anniversary celebrations, President Obama and former President George W. Bush showed up and participated in a memorial march. Naturally, it was a great photo op for all the reporters around, and ... whoa, what the hell?
We see Waldo, but no sign of the other Dubya.
Where's Bush? Well, according to Fox Nation and The Daily Mail, that dirty liberal agenda (and/or White House influence) meant that the New York Times' cover photo couldn't possibly show a positive photo of a conservative former president.
But, of course, that's not true at all. The part of the picture that included Bush just didn't turn out worth a crap. There's a long, technical explanation, but basically, because George and Laura Bush were standing in bright sunlight, they were badly overexposed. You can see the full photo here. There's no conspiracy, sorry.
Unless the sun is secretly a huge liberal.
For more from Ashe, check out Weird Shit Blog and his book, The Book Of Word Records, available now!
Also check out 5 B.S. Political Arguments You Hear Every Election Season and 6 Insane Details Of Corrupt Politics That Movies Get Wrong.
