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November 15, 2007
A Front-Page Parody of Journalism
Even just the lead of the Providence Journal's front-page reprint of this McClatchy Newspapers story deserves an LOL:
With little to gain and much to lose, the [Democrat] party's presidential hopefuls avoid highlighting their positions, which are more moderate than their GOP rivals.
But David Lightman's actual text gets even better (if one is judging his work as a specimen of journalistic parody, that is):
Democratic campaigns also are calculating that once the party nominations are decided, probably early next year, their party's detailed, comprehensive approaches to giving illegal immigrants a path to citizenship will look good next to Republicans' demands simply to get ultratough with anyone who's in the country illegally. ...Democrats are making two political calculations on immigration.
One is that their comprehensive, arguably more tolerant approach will help woo Hispanic voters, who could make up an estimated 10 percent of next year's electorate. ...
The other calculation by Democrats is that bringing up immigration can only hurt them at the moment, because it isn't easy to explain comprehensive action during a quick-answer debate.
Call me an intolerant simpleton, but it's all too easy to see legerdemain in comprehensive plans that, when looked at upside-down in a mirror (in Spanish), read: "Amnesty!"
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"(INSERT DEMOCRAT NOMINEE NAME HERE) wants to give illegal aliens amnesty."
Well, that's the easiest campaign ad ever. If that's the way they want to play it, I say let 'em. If New York is any bell weather, they'd be politically shooting themselves in the face with a shotgun.
Posted by: Greg at November 15, 2007 8:07 PMI read this earlier today and could only laugh at what a sad parody of a newspaper that the Projo has become. What ever happened to minimal journalistic standards? Do they not come into play when you borrow the story material from elsewhere?
"With little to gain and much to lose, the [Democrat] party's presidential hopefuls avoid highlighting their positions, which are more moderate than their GOP rivals."
More moderate? "Moderate" relative to what or whom? I think that's a determination best left to voters; not to newspapers. How about using something accurate like "more liberal" or even the kinder, gentler replacement for the L-word, "more progressive"? The way the you contrast one thing, is by comparing it in objective terms to another; not to itself.
Posted by: Will at November 15, 2007 9:51 PM>>With little to gain and much to lose, the [Democrat] party's presidential hopefuls avoid highlighting their positions, which are more MODERATE than their GOP rivals
I guess that this confirms what many of us have been saying all along, the "moderate Republicans" of the Chafee-Avedesian ilk are de facto Democrats, also known as RINO's - Republicans In Name Only.
Posted by: Tom W at November 15, 2007 10:26 PM"With little to gain and much to lose, the [Democrat] party's presidential hopefuls avoid highlighting their positions"
Is the writer condemning or congratulating?
"which are more moderate than their GOP rivals"
Moderate? Moderate as in admirable? Moderate as in less ambitious? Or moderate as in weasley?
Posted by: Monique at November 16, 2007 12:42 AM