listening to grown-ups

“Gah!”

“What are you doing?”

“Trying to wrap my head around this whole ‘Republicans hate women’ thing.”

“You mean the Sandra Fluke issue?”

“That’s a part of it — a big part, I think, assuming her complaint was made in good faith and that I, being male, can even have a legitimate stance on the problem. What I’m looking at right now is a proposed Arizona law. A news article headline says this law could let businesses fire employees for using birth control.”

“Okay. What are you having trouble understanding?”

“I read the article. I don’t see the headline’s claim supported by the details. I only see a claim from a big civil rights group that businesses might start thinking they have the power and justification to fire people if this bill passes. The bill itself only addresses health coverage, not employment.”

“How do you know that?”

“I read it.”

“Really?”

“Well…not ‘read it’ read it. More like ‘skimmed it’. But all the parts that refer to termination or discrimination are talking about coverage and health care policies.”

“So the problem is that a news headline is wrong?”

“If it were that simple, I wouldn’t be so frustrated. Sensationalist journalism has been around for centuries. I already know not to trust headlines. What’s driving me crazy is how many people who are smarter than I am apparently either don’t know or don’t care about this misrepresentation.”

“What makes you think they’re smarter than you?”

“They have higher-paying jobs, they have higher degrees, they’re raising — sorry, rearing — children, they’ve been in relationships longer, they’ve been following gender politics longer than I have due to them being something other than a heteronormative male&mdash”

“A what?”

“A man who thinks men act like men and women don’t.”

“And it bugs you that these allegedly smart people aren’t bothered by a deceptive headline.”

“They're not just ‘not bothered by it’. They’re taking the headline as written.”

“Why does the headline bother you?”

“Well, besides the obvious belief that the news should contain facts, I think that if you’re trying to generate interest and sympathy for a cause, misrepresenting relevant issues does more harm than good.”

“Uh-huh. And why should I believe you?”

“Because it’s common sense?”

“BZZZZZT! I asked for a reason. I admit your hypothesis sounds plausible, but if the best reason you have for believing your own speculation is ‘it just sounds right’, don’t expect me to share your point of view.”

“But—”

“Hang on. I’m not done. Are you a journalist? Have you ever taken a class in it? Do you know the difference between ‘journalism’ and ‘the press’? Do you know what ‘ethics’ means? In a legal sense?”

“You know I don’t.”

“Right. That’s my point. If all these people who are smarter than you are unconcerned by some little detail pertaining to journalism, a field in which you have no formal training and no professional experience, it’s probably because they’ve figured out that they should be discussing the core of the issue instead of getting distracted by irrelevant details.”

“That issue being that this bill will let employers fire people for reasons they currently can’t?”

“Right.”

“Even though that’s not what the bill says?”

“Look: these people are onto something you haven’t figured out yet. Maybe you should ask them to explain it.”