Archive for April 3rd, 2008
Clinton: Whore?
A FoxNews story today reports that an Air America talk show host has been suspended for calling both Hillary Clinton and Geraldine Ferraro a “whore.”
This piece has some issues with tricky language. For one, the headline says “Air America Host Suspended For Obscenity-Laced Rant Against Clinton, Ferraro,” which makes it sound like the host was on-air at the time. According to the rest of the story, however, she was doing her own public appearances and was suspended for calling Clinton and Ferraro “whore” instead of saying “fuck.”
(Unrelated, but the FoxNews site writes the word “fuck” as “f***,” which I find really insulting to my intelligence as a reader. You don’t need to protect me from the word, and if you do, writing it as “f***” instead of “fuck” isn’t going to do it. It’s not like you read “f star star star” in your head instead of “fuck.”)
The article is also a little tricky with words in the lede, which says, “Air America radio has suspended talk show host Randi Rhodes for what has been described as an appalling rant against Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and Clinton supporter Geraldine Ferraro.” It never says, however, who describes the rant as appalling, which makes this editorializing. This would probably be better journalism if it said something like “in what Air America president John Liberal described as ‘an appalling rant.’”
Of course, we have to keep in mind that Air America is a direct competitor with FoxNews, both ideologically and economically, and it makes sense for them to be tricky like this with language if it makes Air America look worse.
