FAKE NEWS AND A FALSE MATCH
The Hill's Nathaniel Weixel admires the Emperor's new clothes; Caitlin Oprysko of Politico trips over own false rendition; Des Moines Register's Jason Clayworth exploits racial wrongs
Fake news and clumsily troweled propaganda pollute daily, their shifty mongers not at all shy about flaunting their biases. Here are three fresh illustrations.
"Physicians push back on Trump plan to redefine gender" was the rigged title of an illogical 11/13 Nathaniel Weixel article in The Hill.
Weixel's piece was premised on the falsehood that belief in a 'spectrum of genders' was traditionally accepted, and that 2018 embrace of an exclusively binary definition of gender would be novel.
The writer noted the American Medical Association's opposition to President Trump's proposed DHS acknowledgement of biological reality, as if that group's authority were necessarily sound. He did not examine any reasoning the AMA might have offered, but simply asserted its opinion.
Trump's DHS would, according to Weixel, define sex as "a person's status as male or female based on immutable biological traits identifiable by or before birth."
That would not be a "redefinition," but instead, a restoration. Such was the way men and women have been defined throughout human history, medically, culturally, and in religious faiths the world over. Societies and laws both criminal and civil recognize that definition and are built on it.
DNA impacts physical development and biological abilities, regardless of this season's bumper-sticker slogans.
It was the effort in very recent years to impose a new and unscientific meaning that was the attempted redefinition. Weixel is pretending it was the original definition, when of course it was not.
Biology has its claim and cannot be wished away. An old man can't be young merely by identifying as such. A diseased person cannot be healthy through subjective identification. Nor can anyone's sex be changed in that manner. (Surgical mutilation and apparel are only cosmetic.)
Restoring governmental definition of sex to conform with biological science and immutable characteristics is only right.
The Hill's Weixel may have hoped to slip his fraud past the audience. He did not succeed.
In her 11/13 Politico article, "Trump goes on the attack against Macron," Caitlin Oprysko was so assured her readers' would accept bias she made no attempt at obfuscation.
"Emmanuel Macron suggests building its own army to protect Europe against the U.S., China and Russia,” Oprysko wrote that Trump had, in part, tweeted.
Just two paragraphs on, she pronounced the president's recounting a "mischaracterization." Her slur was transparently false, especially as she herself went on to quote the French president saying precisely what Trump had described:
“I believe in the project of a sovereign Europe," Macron had said, according to Oprysko.“...We should protect ourselves when it comes to China, Russia and even the United States of America..."
But the problem is not just calculatingly dishonest reporters, but readers so caught up in partisan devotion that they wink and chuckle tolerantly at counterfeit renditions that indulge their perspectives.
"Should Iowa restore voting rights to 52, 000 felons? Advisory board says yes," was the name above Jason Clayworth's 11/14 Des Moines Register article.
"Multiple civil rights and voter groups, including the League of Women Voters of Iowa, have compared the voter prohibitions to Jim Crow laws enacted by white-dominated legislatures to enforce racial segregation in the 19th and early 20th centuries," Clayworth wrote.
The device of exploiting past racial injustice to ease the progress into law of unrelated phenomena like felons voting, and cow into silence opponents, is despicable. A logical appraisal of Clayworth's assertion reveals its flawed nature.
Jim Crow laws were used to suppress an entire, innocent group because of a shared immutable characteristic. Barring felons from voting is a component of punishment for specific crimes for which they've been duly tried and convicted.
Comparing the two is logically unsupportable and a contemptible smear of the historically marginalized.
The Hill's Nathaniel Weixel admires the Emperor's new clothes; Caitlin Oprysko of Politico trips over own false rendition; Des Moines Register's Jason Clayworth exploits racial wrongs
Fake news and clumsily troweled propaganda pollute daily, their shifty mongers not at all shy about flaunting their biases. Here are three fresh illustrations.
"Physicians push back on Trump plan to redefine gender" was the rigged title of an illogical 11/13 Nathaniel Weixel article in The Hill.
Weixel's piece was premised on the falsehood that belief in a 'spectrum of genders' was traditionally accepted, and that 2018 embrace of an exclusively binary definition of gender would be novel.
The writer noted the American Medical Association's opposition to President Trump's proposed DHS acknowledgement of biological reality, as if that group's authority were necessarily sound. He did not examine any reasoning the AMA might have offered, but simply asserted its opinion.
Trump's DHS would, according to Weixel, define sex as "a person's status as male or female based on immutable biological traits identifiable by or before birth."
That would not be a "redefinition," but instead, a restoration. Such was the way men and women have been defined throughout human history, medically, culturally, and in religious faiths the world over. Societies and laws both criminal and civil recognize that definition and are built on it.
DNA impacts physical development and biological abilities, regardless of this season's bumper-sticker slogans.
It was the effort in very recent years to impose a new and unscientific meaning that was the attempted redefinition. Weixel is pretending it was the original definition, when of course it was not.
Biology has its claim and cannot be wished away. An old man can't be young merely by identifying as such. A diseased person cannot be healthy through subjective identification. Nor can anyone's sex be changed in that manner. (Surgical mutilation and apparel are only cosmetic.)
Restoring governmental definition of sex to conform with biological science and immutable characteristics is only right.
The Hill's Weixel may have hoped to slip his fraud past the audience. He did not succeed.
In her 11/13 Politico article, "Trump goes on the attack against Macron," Caitlin Oprysko was so assured her readers' would accept bias she made no attempt at obfuscation.
"Emmanuel Macron suggests building its own army to protect Europe against the U.S., China and Russia,” Oprysko wrote that Trump had, in part, tweeted.
Just two paragraphs on, she pronounced the president's recounting a "mischaracterization." Her slur was transparently false, especially as she herself went on to quote the French president saying precisely what Trump had described:
“I believe in the project of a sovereign Europe," Macron had said, according to Oprysko.“...We should protect ourselves when it comes to China, Russia and even the United States of America..."
But the problem is not just calculatingly dishonest reporters, but readers so caught up in partisan devotion that they wink and chuckle tolerantly at counterfeit renditions that indulge their perspectives.
"Should Iowa restore voting rights to 52, 000 felons? Advisory board says yes," was the name above Jason Clayworth's 11/14 Des Moines Register article.
"Multiple civil rights and voter groups, including the League of Women Voters of Iowa, have compared the voter prohibitions to Jim Crow laws enacted by white-dominated legislatures to enforce racial segregation in the 19th and early 20th centuries," Clayworth wrote.
The device of exploiting past racial injustice to ease the progress into law of unrelated phenomena like felons voting, and cow into silence opponents, is despicable. A logical appraisal of Clayworth's assertion reveals its flawed nature.
Jim Crow laws were used to suppress an entire, innocent group because of a shared immutable characteristic. Barring felons from voting is a component of punishment for specific crimes for which they've been duly tried and convicted.
Comparing the two is logically unsupportable and a contemptible smear of the historically marginalized.
posted by DC Larson at
November 15, 2018
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
Subscribe to Post Comments [Atom]
<< Home