The skill of headline writers

I scan a lot of news sites and in the process come across items that are not newsworthy in the sense of being important but are amusing and quirky. But there are some items that keep appearing in the headlines so frequently and so prominently that they signify something important but that I never click on.

One of these is the dispute involving Harry and Megan Windsor and his family. Such intrafamily conflicts can be very unpleasant and I do not wish them on anyone but I do not really need breathless commentary on that particular soap opera. The other is the impending wedding of Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce. While I am pleased for any happy couple taking such a decisive step, the details of this event have zero interest for me.

But given how these things constantly appear on the newsfeeds, clearly a lot of people must be interested in them. And it testifies to the skill of news headline writers that even though I don’t follow up on the links, I still know something about these two things just from the headlines.

The Great American State Fair Fiasco

Did you know that at this moment the Trump administration is running what it calls the The Great American State Fair on the National Mall in Washington DC from June 25th to July 19th to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence? Me neither. And so it seems did most of the country since the attendance was to, to put it mildly, sparse, consisting of a handful of people wandering around a largely empty mall. There were supposed to be 56 booths each representing a state or territory but even that was was pathetic, with some states making merely a token effort and not even manning the booths, leaving just empty rooms.

The opening event was to be a big concert featuring musical acts, but they could only line up mostly B and C listers and even they pulled out for various reasons, so Trump decided to hold a rally with himself as the speaker. But that too proved to be largely a bust.

Malcolm Ferguson describes what he saw.
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This is supposed to frighten us?

Republican speaker of the House of Representatives Mike Johnson thought he would scare people by reading out loud what the Democratic Socialists of America stand for and it sounded great!

“I don’t know if you’ve seen this,” said Johnson.

“This is their platform, this is actually quotes from their platform that they published about a day or two ago.… They put this on paper! They’re saying the quiet things out loud.”

Johnson continued: “Abolish the Electoral College, replace the two-party system with a multi-party ‘democracy,’ expand the House of Representatives, implement proportional representation and ranked-choice voting in all elections,” Johnson said.

He continued, describing how the DSA would establish public ownership of large corporations, abolish ICE, and end sanctions on Cuba, Venezuela, and Iran.

“End all military and economic aid to Israel, prosecute U.S. and Israeli leaders responsible for the genocide in Gaza,” Johnson continued.

It should be noted that while the DSA does support most of these points in its official platform, there is a debate about others, like ranked-choice voting and the merits of abolishing the Senate. But all in all, Johnson appears to be trying to fearmonger by threatening the American people with a good time.

In fact it sounded so good that supporters of the DSA have turned that clip into a TikTok video.

More Republicans should go out and spread the word about the DSA policies. It would be great if Trump did so too.

More good news for progressives

Yesterday saw primary races in Colorado and there was an upset when democratic socialist Melat Kiros defeated 15-term incumbent congresswoman Diana Diana DeGette for the congressional seat. Since this is a deep-blue seat centered around Denver, this means that Kiros will almost certainly be elected in November.

There were several interesting features about this race. One is that it was more of a generational than a political switch since the long-time congresswoman DeGette is by no means a reactionary.

Kiros sought to mount a generational challenge to the 68-year-old DeGette, a member of the Congressional Progressive caucus, who supported key progressive policies like Medicare for all and abolishing ICE. But since Donald Trump returned to the White House, Democratic voters have increasingly turned to younger, more aggressive candidates willing to take on their party’s ageing establishment.

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