What The Wingnuts Go All Crazy Over

These are not rational people.

The issue:

When the Washington Times, the conservative newspaper founded and run by the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, changed its top leadership recently, observers expected that more change would be coming. They weren't wrong -- with the replacement of Executive Editor Wes Pruden by John Solomon, who has extensive experience at more mainstream media outlets, we've already seen one small but meaningful change to the paper's coverage. The Times has altered several elements of its style guide, telling staffers to use more neutral terminology instead of the doctrinaire wording and scare quotes favored by the previous editorial regime. In an e-mail memo that's been widely circulated now, one editor wrote:

All:

Here are some recent updates to TWT style.

1) Clinton will be the headline word for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton.

2) Gay is approved for copy and preferred over homosexual, except in clinical references or references to sexual activity.

3) The quotation marks will come off gay marriage (preferred over homosexual marriage).

4) Moderate is approved, but centrist is still allowed.

5) We will use illegal immigrants, not illegal aliens.

Some conservatives have already been upset by the changes at former President Ronald Reagan's favorite newspaper.

Link.

See how the wingnuts freak out. I mean, these people are clearly certifiably insane.

Soon, they’ll drop “illegal” from “illegal immigrants.”

Then, it’ll be “undocumented immigrants.”

Then, they’ll just go the Harry Reid route and call them “undocumented Americans.”

And another wit is here.

And what passes for insight (no pun intended) amongst the loonies:

A commenter at City Paper sums up what the media establishment will say: "Isn’t it kind of scary that someone simply advocating neutral journalism (Solomon) actually sounds kinda heroic?"

That underlines the "mainstream" mistake – that whatever the reigning liberal sensibilities are in our news template, often defined by minority journalist groups, are defined as "neutral."

Liberals joke that the Times would put "gay marriage" in quotes, but the media mainstream is so sensitive in the other direction that they don't even want to use "partial-birth abortion" in quotes, so they tie themselves into vague and confusing pretzels about "certain late-term procedures which we don't want to describe out of our fear of being rapped on the knuckles with a ruler by Kate Michelman and Gloria Feldt."

The same goes for their sensitivities about illegal immigrants. Wemple highlights his memo report with "amnesty" in quotes. That's a word that the media are almost allergic to using (including the cross-town Washington Post). See my immigration study for more on that.

This memo in no way means that Solomon is turning the Times into a liberal newspaper. You'd need more than a lingo change to arrive there. But it does suggest that Solomon has his eyes on impressing the national media elite, and not just impressing the inside-the-Beltway readership of the Times.

Link.