Tuesday, April 18, 2006
What's in a Word?
As breathlessly reported on Drudge, I find the wording of this headline from an AFP article, via Yahoo News to be, well, offensive: Gay parents quietly crash White House Easter party.
Um... excuse me? From the body of the same article: "Despite the opposition of conservative religious groups, Bush and his wife Laura chose not to prevent the gay parents from attending. [emphasis added]"
Now tell me -- how is that "crashing" the party, when they weren't prevented from attending? They stood in line, they got their tickets. Of course, they weren't allowed in until after 11 a.m., three hours after the event started and long after the media (and first couple) had packed up and gone home.
And this whole fucking thing is a non-story. The event is for families and their children, and guess what, you right-wing fundie nutholes? There are quite a lot of families that have two mommies or two daddies, and they have just as much right to take their children to this event as anyone else.
Any single-parent families show up? Any blended families? Any common-law wed parents? No doubt, yes. Any complaints about them from the religiously insane faction? Not that I've heard.
But that a headline writer choses to ignore the content of the story he or she is titling and use the word "crash" is just plain old, utterly offensive. The gay parents no more crashed the egg roll than the producers of... um... Crash crashed the Oscars.
The definition of "crashing a party" is to gain admittance without being invited. All those gay families were given tickets. They were invited.
Ergo the headline, whether it came from AFP or Yahoo news, is homophobic and wrong. Yahoo News, AFP and Drudge can all just suck it.
Um... excuse me? From the body of the same article: "Despite the opposition of conservative religious groups, Bush and his wife Laura chose not to prevent the gay parents from attending. [emphasis added]"
Now tell me -- how is that "crashing" the party, when they weren't prevented from attending? They stood in line, they got their tickets. Of course, they weren't allowed in until after 11 a.m., three hours after the event started and long after the media (and first couple) had packed up and gone home.
And this whole fucking thing is a non-story. The event is for families and their children, and guess what, you right-wing fundie nutholes? There are quite a lot of families that have two mommies or two daddies, and they have just as much right to take their children to this event as anyone else.
Any single-parent families show up? Any blended families? Any common-law wed parents? No doubt, yes. Any complaints about them from the religiously insane faction? Not that I've heard.
But that a headline writer choses to ignore the content of the story he or she is titling and use the word "crash" is just plain old, utterly offensive. The gay parents no more crashed the egg roll than the producers of... um... Crash crashed the Oscars.
The definition of "crashing a party" is to gain admittance without being invited. All those gay families were given tickets. They were invited.
Ergo the headline, whether it came from AFP or Yahoo news, is homophobic and wrong. Yahoo News, AFP and Drudge can all just suck it.
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