Another shot at “news.”

Of course, now we’re wired to let them get away with much more. Election headlines disguise even the least rigorous editorializing as news. Take this article. Admittedly, this sort of article exists precisely to keep agents of change at war with themselves, and thus maintain the status quo. Apart from that, I have no journalistic qualm with reporting that X percentage of Y demographic voted for Z. Unfortunately, it always goes further. Once they tell us “why” certain people voted a certain way, they’ve usually gone too far. If 20% of the electorate in a given State claims “race” mattered in choosing a candidate, the article shouldn’t imply 20% of Democrats equals “Democrats divided by race.” And “black voters voted for the black candidate”? The obvious implication is that they voted for him because he’s black. How does this “significant minority” of 20% so easily morph into this blanket statement? It’s more than a little condescending to think “we” know why blacks or anyone else voted for whom they did. Did gays in California and New York vote for Hillary because she’s a lesbian? No, they voted for her because they thought–and for the record I clearly disagree–she’d be best on the issues that mattered to them. We might also wonder what forces motivate the news media to track the “gay vote” in those two states but not others. How does the vote differ from the general population? Christ, people. Logic classes, anyone?