Happy Talk

Elsewhere on OurFuture.org, economist Charles McMillion pens an absolutely fascinating post on an under-discussed subject: the systematic distortion of economics reporting in the direction of happy talk. They say that in the White House—at least this was one of the running gags on The West Wing—you're not allowed to use the word "recession." Like superstitious thespians who refuse to say "Macbeth" within the four walls of a theater, presidential staffers supposedly deploy the word "ham sandwich," or "sunflower seed," or whatever, whenever they need to refer to a period of negative economic growth.

Fascinating how the same superstition has spread to our quisling media, which, aiding and abetting the White House, has become convinced that to utter the word is to invite the event.

I blame—what else is new?—conservatives. On conservative listserves I'm on, I heard for years that the "liberal media" unfairly poor-mouths the economy. I remember one time when a contributor asked his fellow listservers where they could find a news outlet that reported on the economy positively.

I was a bit thunderstruck, and said so. What kind of investor wants anything but accurate economic news? Patiently, my conservative friends—knowing I was just a silly liberal—explained how (this was just last year) the American economy, under GWB, and (yes!) thanks to the decades of sustained growth brought on by Ronald Reagan's tax cuts, was in its best shape in decades.

But the media won't say so. Because they're "liberal."

As we know, conservatives have perfected a relentless noise machine to mau mau the media into reporting the world the way they prefer. The conservative storyline has been that under Bush we've gloriously prospered. So is it any surprise that's what we hear on CNBC?

Views expressed on this page are those of the authors and not necessarily those of Campaign for America's Future or Institute for America's Future