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'To ask the question is to answer it'

Mon, 04/26/2010 - 08:52 — Joel

At National Review, Rich Lowry is grumpy:

Over at PowerLine, John Hinderaker makes a great catch: CNN describes the Arizona immigration law as "polarizing." John asks why the health-care bill was never described that way, even though it too brought protestors into the streets and was actually, in contrast to the Arizona bill, opposed by most people? To ask the question is to answer it.

I sent Mr. Lowry a note:

A Google search for "health care bill polarizing" gets 476,000 results.

A GoogleNews search for the same term gets more than 600 results.

You say that "to ask the question is to answer it," but trying to answer it might've provided you a different result.

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Mon, 04/26/2010 - 12:02 — Dr. Zaius

Fair enough, Joel

But your link only brings up 195,000 hits, not 467,000.

How many stories does Google come up with if you enter "polarizing immigration bill Arizona"? Answer: 53,900.

How many stories does Google come up with if you enter "polarizing immigration law Arizona"? Answer 35,200.

How long was ObamaCare in the news? Quite a long time. How long has the MSM been reporting on Arizona's new immigration law? Less than a week.

Powerline's point is still sound. There must have been millions of stories — many, many million — written and findable on the Web about ObamaCare. But a relative pittance described it "polarizing." The coverage of the Arizona law has only begun, and it seems that the "polarizing" angle is quite prominent — despite the fact that 70 percent of Arizonans support the law. Is 30 percent disapproval now new standard for something being "polarizing"? Or, as Powerline suggests, does the definition depend on the liberal biases of the reporting class.

I say that the evidence is pretty clear: To ask that question is to answer it.

Mon, 04/26/2010 - 12:10 — Joel

Hmmmm

I wonder why I'm still seeing 467,000 results when others of you see only 195,000. I swear that's what I'm seeing. Really.

Anyhoo, even if we accept the lower number, the fact remains that some combination of the words "health care bill" and "polarizing" were used hundreds of thousands of times. I suppose we can argue how significant that is, but that would a boring and nitpicky conversation.

Not that it makes a huge difference to me. But it's almost never the case that "to ask the question is to answer it." Particularly if one hasn't taken 30 seconds or so to actually try to answer it. That's almost an outright statement that one's ideological filters defy any fact or evidence.

Mon, 04/26/2010 - 12:18 — Joel

And...

Since the article in question was from CNN, let's use that Google search to go all the way back to January:

Health care debate won't end with bill's passage, experts say

Sarah Binder, an expert on Congress and legislative politics with the Brookings Institution, said that in the past two decades, Republicans and Democrats have become increasingly polarized.
"It just seems that the incentive to disagree seems to be growing," she said.
Because of the ideological polarization, the parties are growing further apart in policy terms, and thus reaching across the aisle is becoming a tougher task, Binder said.
The polarization, coupled with another development in recent history -- partisan team play -- has contributed to the heightened partisan rancor surrounding the health care debate, she said.
Most Americans disapprove of the current health care legislation, according to CNN's most recent polling.
"In addition to the polarization that already exists, there is deep polarization in the country about the bill itself on the merits," Gergen said. "There may be instances, but I can't think of them, when a major piece of domestic legislation has passed in the teeth of public disapproval."

So there's that.

But this is a rather narrow and nitpicky conversation. Use of the word "polarizing" and its variants aside, is there anybody who watched five minutes of health care debate coverage who didn't think it was polarizing?

Mon, 04/26/2010 - 13:15 — Khabalox

Polarizing Health Care

We all knew that ObamaCare would polarize the nation. What most of us failed to realize was that Obama actually wants to turn us into polar bears. Just look at the effect socialized medicine had on Canada.