-By Warner Todd Huston
Like Jerry Seinfeld, the Associated Press did a masterful job of making a story out of nothing this weekend after news broke that former Vice President Dick Cheney was the recipient of a heart transplant.
In fact, APs first paragraph is one of those masterful bits of psychological manipulation along the lines of the old rhetorical trick that goes: “when did you stop beating your wife?”
With its first paragraph the AP cast doubt on the propriety of Cheney getting a heart transplant, raised the specter of Cheney getting “special treatment” (even while denying he did) and played the age card to boot pointing out that many “thousands of younger people” are still waiting while Cheney is now walking around with a new heart.
The nerve of that guy.
Of course, the whole paragraph is geared to cause doubt about the propriety of Cheney getting his transplant even while hiding under plausible deniability that this was its purpose.
Here is that first paragraph:
Doctors say it is unlikely that former Vice President Dick Cheney got special treatment when he was given a new heart at age 71 that thousands of younger people also were in line to receive.
Think about this. If doctors say it is “unlikely” Cheney got “special treatment,” then what the heck is this story here for? Of course, what the AP did here is classic. They put the idea that Cheney did get special treatment in reader’s minds even while saying he didn’t.
Then the AP played the age card saying that “thousands of younger people” are still waiting in line while Cheney got his. This paints Cheney as an evil, old man that jumped the line and put himself in front of those apparently more deserving young people.
Why does AP hate old people, anyway?
Of course, the truth is that Cheney waited longer than most transplant patients do. As Reuters reported, Cheney waited 20 months for his heart while the normal wait time is between six months and a year for most people.
But let’s not dwell on all that, eh?
You have to hand it to AP, though. This one is a perfect example of left-wing psyops.
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“The only end of writing is to enable the reader better to enjoy life, or better to endure it.”
–Samuel Johnson
Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer. He has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and before that he wrote articles on U.S. history for several small American magazines. His political columns are featured on many websites such as Andrew Breitbart’s BigGovernment.com, BigHollywood.com, and BigJournalism.com, as well as RightWingNews.com, RightPundits.com, CanadaFreePress.com, StoptheACLU.com, AmericanDaily.com, among many, many others. Mr. Huston is also endlessly amused that one of his articles formed the basis of an article in Germany’s Der Spiegel Magazine in 2008.
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