(Stupid) Headline of the Day (pro-life Dems edition)

By Michael J.W. Stickings

Misleading nonsense from ABC News:

Are Democrats Now Pro-Life?

The answer, obviously, is NO. The Democratic Party is, for the most part, a pro-choice party -- albeit one with numerous pro-lifers.

The ostensible purpose of the article is to look at how the party is "engaged in a political high-wire act -- trying to bring in pro-life supporters without offending its pro-choice base." But that's not what the headline would have us believe.

And, indeed, the article is misleading, too. Of course the party isn't monolithically pro-choice. Of course there are efforts underway to broaden the party's appeal, to attract pro-lifers.

The same is also true for the Republican Party, an anti-choice party that includes many pro-choicers. But where's the "Are Republicans Now Pro-Choice?" article? That would be just as stupid, and yet the media are, as always, much more willing to misrepresent and sensationalize all things Democratic than Republican.

Gasp! There are pro-lifers among the Democrats! Gasp! What are they going to do?

And then there's the requisite quotation from a celebrity reporter, this time Cokie Roberts: "For [Obama] to find himself sitting on top of a party platform that seems to exclude many of the beliefs of voters who are important to him makes no sense at all."

Thanks Cokie. Here's a brown-paper bag with unmarked 20s from the RNC.

Honestly, this makes "no sense at all"? It's what always happens in presidential politics. Since when do the party and the party's nominee -- Democratic or Republican -- agree on everything? Some "beliefs" are always, and by necessity, excluded.

Does McCain agree with everything the Republican Party stands for? Hardly. Besides, isn't he supposed to be a "maverick"? Isn't that what his admirers and enablers in the media would have us believe? -- that he courageously stands apart from, and challenges, his own party? Why is that okay, why do the media fawn all over him, suck up to him, and celebrate him, while similar, and even much less significant, tensions on the other side are played up in the media and blown way out of proportion? Why is McCain allowed to be a maverick, even as he conveniently morphs into a Bush-style hardliner, while Obama is presented as the leader of a party in apparent disarray?

Well, because the media include GOP-friendly geniuses like Cokie Roberts -- not to mention the editors who wrote this amazingly, if all-too-typically, stupid headline.