Weekender:Youth

Editorial writers can get pretty crazy, but that's what they're there for--sort of.

Date published: 5/2/2006

By STEPHEN DAUSE

YOUTH CORRESPONDENT

This is the fourth of five rants on what it means to be an editorialist. The fifth and final one will run in the May 16 edition of MyLine.

For some reason, the words, "Lies! All lies!" amuse me. Perhaps it's because they're so simply funny, yet can reveal a great deal about the forming and expression of opinion.

Flat-out denials are the sheerest, most bland of political statements. To anyone who screams, "Lies! All Lies!" with sincerity, it doesn't matter what the other side is saying. The statements are wrong, and they are going to stay that way, at least in that person's mind.

Extreme opinions are on the fringes of what we like to consider the thoughtful, democratic America. Yet how often does one change one's mind in view of contradictory evidence? Not often, at least in the newspaper world. There are only a few well-known opinion writers whose views have changed from either conservative, liberal or libertarian to another of the same three (sorry, communitarians). But these shifts in opinion are rare and happen over time.

Mostly, those with things to say come out and say them and keep saying them until they retire some 30 to 60 years later. Conservatives don't like change, and liberals don't like sameness. Political opinions are formed relatively early in life and tend to stay the way they were formed.

So why are we all so hardheaded? Perhaps it's just a human thing. It's not all bad, either. New evidence comes out for all sorts of opinions on all sorts of topics quite frequently.

It would seem silly after holding an opposite position to say, "Oh, look, economic numbers are improving; I'm now a Bushite," or "I used to support the troops, but that Abu Ghraib scandal has convinced me that all soldiers are just as bad as the terrorists."

Editorialists are good at what they do. They're experts in persuasive writing. If you're not careful, exaggerations of fact and logical fallacies will trick you into changing your thinking more often than you should.

When citing factual numbers or events to support an opinion, most of the phrasing is dedicated not to giving the information but carefully padding it to guide the reader to the "correct" point of view.

It might be nice if some editorialists were more scholarly and less ideological in their analysis, but the argument can be made that that's not what they're there to do.

A neutral recitation of the facts is left, if not to the front page, to the history books. But even the latter are obviously tilted if not more so than current-events literature.

Still, those who write opinion have some responsibility to tell it like it is and to acknowledge dissenting opinions that are, while less supported, still understandable. Sometimes they do this; sometimes they don't.

Ann Coulter and Michael Moore don't, that's for sure. But maybe the world needs a few "Lies! All lies!" accusers just to remind us of what it is that we're not trying to achieve.

STEPHEN DAUSE is a senior at Colonial Forge High School.

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Date published: 5/2/2006