Broadly speaking

True or false?

It’s been said that politics make strange bedfellows; I say political ads toss the mattress out the window. (You didn’t need to sleep, did you?)

In election seasons, the Voices page is often inundated with letters about this candidate or that, and unfortunately, quite a few of those letters end up in the scrap heap, usually because the writer either basically parroted a campaign ad or because he took what was said as gospel truth without checking it out.

I’ve touched on this a little previously, but some letters received over the past week dictate a return of the topic.

One of the reasons I’m not a huge fan of politics in general (especially as practiced today) is that each side makes broad statements that, absent context, can seem correct, but are often misleading and/or disingenuous. Well, they can make those statements, but the other side can’t.

I feel like I’m back on the playground.

The alternative to not allowing one side while allowing the other to continue to make such broad statements is to not allow them to anyone. Considering we’re in the middle of a battle royale at the moment, that unfortunately ain’t happening.

We necessarily have to give a bit more leeway to broad statements during election season—as long as what’s said is true in the broader sense (though often lacking relevant context) and isn’t an outright lie.

To demonstrate, a couple of recent examples:

You can say: Hobby Lobby denies birth-control coverage to its female employees.

You can’t say: Hobby Lobby denies coverage of any birth control to its female employees.

Of the 20 FDA-approved forms on the list associated with the Affordable Care Act, Hobby Lobby denies coverage of four methods it believes to be abortifacients. Because those four methods are denied, the first statement is acceptable (misleading, yes, but acceptable). Since it allows the other 16 methods, you cannot say it denies any or all birth control.

You can say: Tom Cotton voted against disaster relief.

You can’t say: Tom Cotton voted against disaster relief for Arkansans.

Cotton indeed voted against disaster-relief bills or amendments five times, four of those votes related to Hurricane Sandy relief, as the GovTrack voting-record database shows. None of those votes, however, were related directly to Arkansas.

Moral of the story? Take claims in political ads with an entire salt mine, and check them out for yourself before placing your trust in a candidate who relies on a lack of context to make political points. Sure, that may mean you have no one to vote for, but …

Scott Stubenrauch notes that there’s no rule in the policy box stating that letter-writers get only one letter per 30 days, and he’s right; it’s not there. As far as I can tell, it’s never been there (but I could be wrong); I know it wasn’t there when I put through a revision of the box last year for clarity’s sake, and that was the first revision in years.

However, because we want to conserve space for the letter-writers, we necessarily leave out some well-established rules, such as the 30-day rule; that policy box would be much larger if we added in every rule. Besides, I and others here have written about that particular rule enough that it should not be an issue.

When I read last week’s column on the proof, I did add a few words to make it more clear that I meant the rules in the box as well as the well-known ones not there, but I probably should have just rewritten that section. This is why everyone needs an editor.

I’m just sorry the “gotcha” wasn’t of the more exciting variety. I’ll try to make any future mistakes more embarrassing for me.

At least Scott was fairly nice about it; some aren’t.

It’s never been news to me that I wouldn’t be able to please everyone with my work on the Voices page. All I can do is try to fill the page with as broad a range of letters and columns as I can in the hopes that more than family, friends and people I knew growing up will read the page. I know there are people out there who won’t be happy regardless of what I do; they know I can’t walk on water, but they’d sure like to see me try (and hey, I can’t swim; bonus!).

Tell ya what: I’ll bring the life vest, and you bring the popcorn.

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Assistant Editor Brenda Looper is editor of the Voices page. Read her blog at blooper0223.wordpress.com.

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