It should come as no surprise that I'm no fan of partisanship, especially the blind, rabid kind. If that is a surprise, you either haven't been paying attention, or perhaps are in the grips of such partisanship.
Parents know a little something about selective hearing; partisanship, in a sense, works the same way. Say something straightforward and, depending on where allegiances lie, it could be perceived in ways you never would have imagined.
Like confirmation bias in which people seek out information that reinforces their views (usually relegating anything that challenges those views to the trash pile), some partisans also hear what they want to hear and discard the rest. It's one of the reasons I tend to look askance at truncated quotes--usually just a very few isolated words--as so many times what the speaker said is not what those partisans say he did.
Heck, movie ads are some of the worst when it comes to truncated quotes, transforming, for example, Entertainment Weekly's review of Se7en 10 years ago to "masterpiece" on the movie posters, rather than including the context surrounding that word: "a small masterpiece of dementia."
And most Arkansans over 40 likely remember Sheffield Nelson's "raise and spend" ads mischaracterizing a quote from Bill Clinton in the 1990 gubernatorial race.
Sometimes there's a reason--more money from more moviegoers, more votes--for the contextual divorce from reality. Sometimes, though, it's not the original source that's the problem--it's the end user's biases that prevent understanding and/or acceptance of things at face value. In some people, their partisanship is so strong that not only do they choose news services on the basis of perceived ideological slant, they also can't seem to help interpreting what's said by someone of a different viewpoint in a manner that doesn't square with what was actually said.
Slate's Bill Bishop commented on this phenomenon back in 2008 a few weeks before the general election, noting "It's not what people say that matters in today's politics. It's what people hear." John Avlon of CNN went a step further in 2013 when talking to Bill Maher about Tom Cotton's rewriting of history on attacks in the U.S. during the George W. Bush administration: "Hyper-partisanship makes you stupid, and you start playing to the cheap seats."
Which helps explain why people were so upset when Donald Trump was accused of calling Iowans stupid, because he would never ... oh, wait ... never mind.
Partisanship has gotten so bad that the simplest statements are being reimagined, often as the complete opposite of what was actually said.
What President Obama says: I am a Christian.
What partisans hear: Allahu Akbar!!!!!
What he really means: Seriously, dudes, give it a rest and listen. I. Am. A. Christian.
As long as we continue to let ideology lead us around and inform what we hear and see, this will keep happening, and people like me will keep getting frustrated every time it does. For speakers, say what you mean and mean what you say; for the audience, pay attention to the words actually said, not to how you feel about the speaker.
It really is that simple.
We here on the Voices page are often misunderstood. Some days I get a little seasick from all the eye-rolling (often accompanied by heavy sighs and the thud of my head on the desk) as a result of wild misinterpretations of extremely simple statements I or someone else makes on this page.
What is said: Anything stated as fact will be fact-checked. If you're stating your opinion, please make sure that it would be obvious to the average person that it's your opinion.
What is heard: We don't print opinion, so tough luck ... and your mama dresses you funny!
What it really means: Just what it said ... you do realize this is an opinion page, right? That's kinda what we do here.
Yes, if you state opinion as fact when it's not, you won't be published if it's not clear that it's your opinion. For example, you may believe the moon is made of smoked gouda, but since science has proved it's not (sorry, MasterChef Junior contestants), you can't say "The moon is made of gouda," as it is stated as a fact. You can say "I believe the moon is made of gouda," which indicates that it is your belief, mistaken as it might be.
Besides, the story I heard was that the moon was made of green cheese, which gouda typically isn't. So there.
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Assistant Editor Brenda Looper is editor of the Voices page. Read her blog at blooper0223.wordpress.com. Email her at blooper@arkansasonline.com.
Editorial on 12/09/2015