The Washington Post Sure Does Love Dumb Clickbait Headlines These Days
By William Estes
The Washington Post recently broke news that was quickly hailed as the Trump administration’s latest turn at jackbooted thuggery: the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the Post then reported (and later walked back), has been banned from using seven terms in documents related to the president’s next budget request. Some words — “fetus,” “transgender” — evoke thorny political disputes, while others, like “science-based,” seem largely unobjectionable.
On social media, which skews young, left and trigger-happy, the response was immediate and overwhelming. Orwell was quoted; protests were streamed; teeth were gnashed. A typical post collected hundreds of likes and retweets for warning that “banning doctors and scientists from using medically-accurate terms is not just politics – it puts lives at risk,” never mind that the reporting discussed no ban on doctors or scientists. The Human Rights Campaign went so far as to project the supposedly verboten speech across the Trump International Hotel in Washington, in an ironic illustration of the expansive American tolerance for political demonstration, no matter how half-baked or trivial.