Video of Axelrod's Goofing

One chant I don't hear here, but which I read was chanted, was "Five more months! Five more months!"

The primary catcalls seem to be "Where are the jobs?" and "So-Lyyyyn-dra, So-Lyyyn-dra!"

I've asked @buzzfeedben and @buzzfeedandrew to craft a consistent style guide on when it's "heckling" or "protesting" (good words) and when it's "disrupting" or "shouting down." Don't be hard on them, though, because @buzzfeedandrew actually noted the point.

I think we're going to see a lot of this, from both sides. Hold the media's feet to the fire on its terminology -- "disrupt" suggests a crime (or a near-crime; sounds like disorderly person, sounds like assailing someone's right to speak) whereas "heckling" is something everyone can enjoy at a hapless buffoon's expense.

And "protesting" is of course positive.

As the campaign season goes on, we'll see the left's disruptions consistently described as "protests" and the right's counter-disruptions described as they were in the Town Hall protests -- thuggish, possibly racist attacks on America itself.

Don't let them do it. Insist they craft a style guidance on the terminology and stick to it, consistently, and I don't mean "consistently positive when the left is disruptive, and consistently negative when the right acts up."

posted by Ace at 03:25 PM

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