By Arthur Alpert
In this holiday season, I bring you tidings of joy!
Specifically, I jingle my bells to point out a virtue of the Albuquerque Journal – its modesty or the disinclination to call attention to itself.
Look for yourself. It’s in a three-paragraph “Around the Nation” item Thursday, Dec. 9, A3, datelined Washington. The lead says:
“House and Senate Republicans on Wednesday thwarted Democratic efforts to award $250 checks to Social Security recipients facing a second consecutive year without a cost-of-living increase.”
How easy it would have been for Journal management, in its dedication to the Republican Party, to pound its chest in the headline. As in, for example:
“Republicans Kill Social Security Bonus”
or
“GOP Thwarts Dems’ Giveaway to Retirees”
or
“GOP: US Can’t Afford to Coddle Geezers”
But no, a Journal editor wrote:
“Plan to Give Seniors $250 Checks Fails”
See the decency? This was a flat refusal to take credit for the deed. Note, too, that the self-abnegation came at some cost. For in removing the subject (Republicans) the writer went from active to passive voice (“Plan…Fails”) resulting in a deadly dull headline.
What heartwarming self-sacrifice, especially as we approach Christmas.
The three-paragraph story right under it may represent more Journal modesty. Or is it nobility?
This story and headline said the DREAM Act passed in the House, 216-198. No mention, none, of Democrats, Republicans and how they voted.
I had to visit the N.Y. Times web site to learn that all but eight Republicans (including three Florida Cuban-Americans) voted “No,” no legal status for the children of illegal immigrants pursuing higher education.
Omitting the vote must be another refusal on the part of the Republican Journal to take credit, another expression of modesty.
On the same page, the primary “Daily Briefing” story from AP Washington dealt with Democratic opposition to President Obama’s compromise with (or surrender to) the GOP on taxes.
Surprisingly, the story never mentioned that the GOP has its own internal debate on the deficit-raising measure.
But I won’t discuss that today.
You see, the Journal’s failure to report on Tea Party-GOP Establishment tensions just doesn’t evoke the spirit of the holidays. And I so enjoyed exploring Journal management’s extraordinary modesty.
It was modesty, wasn’t it?
How funny. I just do not see the Journal being Republican oriented. I figured them more a left wing paper. Most Conservatives do, though a liberal did tell me that liberals consider the Journal to be right wing. Now I realize they are neither right wing nor left wing, but totally devoted to their own point of view, their own version of the truth. Think about it. How else can they succeed at offending both Conservatives AND Liberals. Perhaps because their view is a corporatist view and is neither left wing nor right wing…kind of like our government.
I think you have it absolutely right! My colleague Arthur Alpert has written about this recently.
Tracy
Let’s get real here (or is this a joke that I am somehow missing?). The ABQ Journal is “neither left wing nor right wing,” if anything it is more of a “left wing paper,” it is really “corporatist,” and Tracy feel that this is “absolutely right”? We must be living on completely different planets. Let’s set it up as a syllogism. Corporatists favor no government controls of the market place, no government oversight, no taxes, and minimal protections for consumers and workers. Republicans are trying to undermine government, minimize taxes, eliminate consumer protections, do away with minimum wage and extension of unemployment benefits, and give corporations the power to control our democracy. The ABQ Journal follows a double standard of criticizing Democrats (often over trivial issues) and virtually always recommends Republican candidates (viz. our last election). I leave it up to anyone with a brain in his/her head to draw the logical conclusion.
“… the writer went from active to passive voice (“Plan…Fails”) …”
I think you missed the target here. I wouldn’t actually know a passive voice if someone were to have had a bite from one, but I don’t think that’s the problem.
It makes the plan itself be the actor, and blames it for its own failure. It makes the plan into a loser, because the plan failed. Nobody killed it, it just was a failure.
“How else can they succeed at offending both Conservatives AND Liberals. ”
Easy. They’re republican hacks, but a lot of people today regard the political spectrum as something that runs from Rand Paul and Michael Savage in the middle to Michelle Bachman on the center-right. Anyone as liberal as Ronald Reagan is regarded as a socialist (he raised taxes!!eleventy-one!!11). So by being merely modestly hard core crazy right wing, the Journal appears to some to be center-left, because their perspective is so skewed.