I am going to beat a still living horse, the media’s persistent willingness to buy into the terminology of the right. We’ve grown so used to terms like “pro-life” that even many on the left use them precisely the way that the right wants them used.
What brings this to mind, yet again, is this article in today’s Boston Globe. The online version does not repeat the print edition’s article title, which in the print edition is: Tempers flare at free-speech rally.
The rally, in fact, has nothing to do with free speech, except as window dressing for a Nazi rally. That is absolutely clear, despite the presence of some useful idiots who may or may not actually hold the liberal beliefs they purport to espouse.
To give the Globe its due, an online portfolio of pictures of the event puts the words “free-speech” in scare quotes, which sends the appropriate message. But using the term without qualification in the title to a story sends a message, particularly to those who skim the headline and go on to the next story, who might well conclude that the counter-protestors were against free speech.
To paraphrase Freud, sometimes a Nazi is just a Nazi.
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