"WHAT'S AN ambitious right-wing pol to do?" the Chronicle asked its print readers Sunday in a thumbsucker by Patricia Kilday Hart. You won't find . . .
. . . that headline on the Web, however. Now it's "Decisions, decisions for Dan Patrick."
Is Mr. Patrick, a conservative state senator from Houston, accurately described as a right-winger? Sure.
And it would even be fair -- not accurate, fair -- to call him a right-winger in a universe in which American politics was populated both by right-wingers and left-wingers.
Sadly, the Chronicle, like most other newspapers and the wire services, reserves -wing almost exclusively for conservatives. Our country is overrun with right-wingers, apparently, with nary a left-winger in sight. It's quite amazing, really, to speculate how broke America might be if we actually had any left-wingers in Washington, D.C.
I'm talking now about what the paper's reporters, analysts, editorialists, and wire services write in their own voice, not when quoting others. The newspaper earns no points when conservative columnists and letter writers break the embargo and call someone -- former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, for instance -- a left-winger.
The Chronicle's stylebook apparently admits the existence of right-wingers in American politics, but reserves left-wing for the odd foreign communist or hard-socialist politician. They have left-wingers. But America, thank the Good Lord -- if anyone at the Chronicle actually believes in the Good Lord -- doesn't.
Right-wing, by contrast, is in rather promiscuous use by journalists as a name for both American and foreign conservatives. Most overseas assassins and paramilitaries, for instance, are right-wingers. (It's just a matter of time before right-wing nuts in America start shooting people, don't you know?)
Pigeon-holed as a right-wing disciple, Michelle Bachmann is offering herself as . . . .
[Rick Perry] has also courted the extreme right wing of the Republican Party with . . . .
Buffeted by the media storm, Claire and Mo find themselves manipulated by reporters, right-wing zealots, the liberal left and a governor who . . . . [A prime example, this, of how conservatives are "right-wing zealots" while liberals are "the liberal left."]
And, with the help of right-wing zillionaires and their blank checks, [Rick Perry's] won just about every . . . .
Perry's speech was devoid of the vitriol of a candidate simply hoping to attract the far-right wing of the Republican Party.
[A] political scientist who has never been accused of right-wing sympathies . . . .
Hassidic men are often assumed to be ultra-orthodox and more right wing than their other Orthodox peers.
Again, just to keep your head straight, the issue is not the accuracy of the label but the fairness of using it without using a corresponding label for extreme leftists.
This matters because -wing -- right or left, and regardless of its accuracy in any given case -- has pejorative connotations. The can't-we-all-just-get-along crowd sees both wings as extreme, as wingnuts. (That's another lexicographical BFF among among liberal journalists (but I repeat myself)), who use it solely to refer to conservatives.
A nice step in the right direction, so to speak, for a newspaper interested in fair reporting -- if such a newspaper still exists -- would be to appoint a Wing Czar, preferably not one from Buffalo.
Withdrawal can be painful, so let's not make things too hard at first. For every use of left-wing as a descriptor, a reporter would get two red poker chips. Each time he used right-wing, he would pay one chip back to the czar. When he ran out, the word could not be used again until the magic left-wing appeared once more in his copy.
The red chips would be known as EBCs -- earned bias credits.
One might think this would be acceptable, since the newspaper could then indulge the fantasy that there are twice as many wingnuts on the right as on the left.
But another fantasy would trump that one. The ruling fantasy is that none on the left is a -winger. Not Ms. Pelosi. Not Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Not the socialist senator, Bernie Sanders. Not the old hater, Maxine Waters. And certainly not he of "bitter clinger" fame, our Boy President.
So, magically, poof, American politics would suddenly find itself as short on -wings as Hooters after a six-hour fraternity party.
Ms. Kilday Hart is, technically speaking, innocent of using right-wing in this story. I don't find the term in either the print or online version of her piece, though she has used it plenty of times before. It's the headline writer for this story who deserves to be escorted to the door with all his stuff in a cardboard box.
What she's guilty of is snotty, snarky, dismissive, condescending commentary about a politician with whom she disagrees, politically and ideologically, and whom she apparently loathes personally.
A politician with unbridled ambition . . . pinnacle of prestige and power . . . nice polished desk on the floor of the U.S. Senate . . . make a living decimating your debate partners . . . Dewhurst gets the willies when you walk onto the floor . . . hecklers in the gallery who backed your anti-groping . . . legislation . . . you love power . . . epic kingmakers . . . either office [governor or lieutenant governor] would be yours for the taking . . . [other statewide officials] will be eating out of your hand . . . you love power . . . [you have been Governor Perry's] confidant and tea party ambassador . . . orchestrate the selections of your fellow senators . . . blocking the elections of a moderate . . . . inching toward Shangri-La . . . that pesky rule . . . think of the fun you could have! . . . you'll make a new BFF: David Dewhurst . . . .
There are some basic problems with truth here -- Mr. Patrick has not, for instance, "made a living decimating [his] debate partners" on his radio show, as she might know if she had ever bothered to listen -- but the big problem is fairness. The disrespectful tone is one she and the Chronicle reserve for solely for conservatives. Another example of the baleful influence of Maureen Dowd on what should be serious journalism.
My recommendation to the Chronicle: Fire Ms. Kilday Hart along with the headline writer. Then dig up Bo Byers and put him back in charge of the Austin bureau. He was a bit of a soft lefty himself -- an old-fashioned moderate Democrat, now an extinct species -- but he was honest, fair, and impeccably decent.
By the evidence of "What's an ambitious right-wing pol to do?" Ms. Kilday Hart is none of the above.
UPDATE: Thanks for the links from Texas Watchdog and blogHouston.
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