MYTHS CAN be difficult. I once began a newspaper story by saying some idea or other had sprung from a county supervisor's head fully formed, like Venus from the head of Zeus. As many readers delighted in telling me, it was Athena who sprang fully formed from Zeus' head. Venus was the result of a completely different body part from a completely different mythological character.
Katie McNally dealt with some more recently minted mythology last week. While decrying the number of women who seem to be on Grounds seeking an MRS. degree, McNally wrote, "For the most part, all the protests and bra-burning of our foremothers was not in vain."
It's possible that some feminist somewhere has incinerated an undergarment, but the bra-burning feminist is a myth. A 2009 story in The New Yorker explained it this way: "In 1968, at a protest against the Miss America pageant, in Atlantic City, feminists tossed items that they felt were symbolic of women's oppression into a Freedom Trash Can: copies of Playboy, high-heeled shoes, corsets and girdles. Lindsy Van Gelder, a reporter for the [the New York] Post, wrote a piece about the protest in which she compared the trash-can procession to the burning of draft cards at antiwar marches, and a myth was born."
When I asked McNally about her bra-burning reference, she emailed that several readers had already pointed out the historical dearth of bra-burning protests. Nevertheless, McNally stood by the image.
"There is no denying, however, that the reference to bra burning has become common in popular culture for the movement to overturn old fashioned ideas about traditional women's roles," she wrote. "I was using it in this context. That being said, I think to focus on this reference in my column misses the point of my piece entirely."
It's entirely possible to get the point of McNally's piece and still notice the bra problem.
But the problem makes it easier for people who want to belittle her point to do so. And it exposes a lack of attention on her part.
In "Politics and the English Language," George Orwell wrote, "People who write in this manner usually have a general emotional meaning - they dislike one thing and want to express solidarity with another - but they are not interested in the detail of what they are saying." A scrupulous writer, according to Orwell, asks herself a series of questions while crafting each sentence.
"But you are not obliged to go to all this trouble," Orwell wrote. "You can shirk it by simply throwing your mind open and letting the ready-made phrases come crowding in. They will construct your sentences for you - even think your thoughts for you, to a certain extent - and at need they will perform the important service of partially concealing your meaning even from yourself. It is at this point that the special connection between politics and the debasement of language becomes clear."
The basic problem with the bra burning story is that it isn't true. Retelling it won't make it true. But retelling a story can make people believe it. And that has consequences.
Sunday was the one hundredth anniversary of Ronald Reagan's birth. Reagan is an icon of anti-big government, anti-debt, anti-tax conservatism.
Here's what happened while Reagan was president. Instead of abolishing two cabinet-level departments as he said he would, Reagan added one. The government added close to a quarter of a million employees. The national debt? It tripled. Taxes? Reagan signed a big tax cut into law his first year in office. He raised taxes 11 times after that.
That's reality, but it's the Reagan myth that influences politics.
Perpetuating myths aren't the only ways newspapers mislead readers. A headline in The Cavalier Daily last week announced: "Health-care law reaches courts: Judges rule that Congress cannot force individuals to buy health insurance, cases will reach Supreme Court." The health care law has been in the courts for a while and two judges have ruled that Congress can't require people to buy health insurance. Two other judges have ruled that Congress can. The original version of the story - the version that ran in The Washington Post - had these lines just past where The Cavalier Daily cut the story off: "The law is being challenged in 20 pending suits. In two cases, federal judges have upheld it. But in two others, including one in Florida on Monday, judges have ruled against it. These cases are likely to be heard in midlevel appeals courts before reaching the Supreme Court."
It's not easy to write headlines and make stories fit on deadline. But the cardinal rule of headline writing is that headlines reflect the stories below them. The first rule of cutting stories is that all the important stuff has to stay in.\nTim Thornton is the ombudsman for The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at ombud@cavalierdaily.com.
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