Missing the Point of Missing the Point with Chris Reed

So last week, Chris Reed responded to my earlier piece in reaction to his complaints about the supposedly dishonest exaggeration of the health-care crisis in this country.  Atdleft has already made his voice heard on this, but I think there are a few other points that need to be made.

After his lead in about his high-minded tenacity in seeking out lies in any dark corner, he dives into the crux of his argument:

Oh, come on. Of course the distinction between U.S. citizens and non-citizens/illegal immigrants matters. Whether or not someone with a certain set of political views thinks it should matter, it does -- it's central to many policy debates.

It doesn't matter when you're trying to improve the state of public health in the country.  As I said in the first place, germs don't check citizen status.  This is much less a political issue (as which he tries to dismiss it) than it is a biological, medical issue.  So to start with the pragmatic side, I don't care if I catch the flu from a Mayflower decendent or a Martian, I'm still sick and I still wish they'd been able to go to the doctor before I caught something from them.  I won't run through (again) the reasons why people not getting sick is good for the country, but it is.  And if, as Reed says, this issue is central to many policy debates, then he isn't the only one missing the point.  I realize that extending health coverage to illegal immigrants is a political debate as much as any other, but in terms of understanding just how many people are walking petri dishes, it isn't an issue.

Next up is the neverending quest for truth:

So should our standard be that some misleading/dishonest/utterly deceptive statistics are OK in policy debates if they serve our cause and we believe we hold the moral high ground?

No way: Every time a fake fact becomes part of the discourse, it hurts the quality of the discourse. The ends don't justify the means, however noble the intentions of the deceivers or accomplices to the deception.

I certainly won't suggest that exaggeration or outright lying is ever acceptable in the media, or anywhere really.  But if this is really supposed to be the only point here...well...it isn't.  As I mentioned last time, "American" is not interchangeable with "American citizen" and as a result, his semantics lesson is poorly conceived.  If the concern is that the majority of people would presume the two to be interchangeable when receiving their news, I hope the suggestion isn't that the media has a responsibility to dumb down its level of discourse.

The point here isn't the noble or ignoble goals of those who may exaggerate information to promote a political agenda.  My point is that, at a certain point, a problem becomes so large that it's just too large.  The health care crisis in this country is such a problem.  The implications of Reed's complaints is that somewhere between 35 million and 47 million uninsured people in the United States exists a degree of seriousness that would alter the collective motivation to act; that somewhere between 35 and 47 million, the problem becomes big enough to demand attention.  I find this to be both distasteful and insulting, and if that's something he really believes, well...that's a pretty contemptuous perspective on Americans, whether citizens or not.

His response closes, as all indignant rants should, by trying to pick a fight and dismissing Calitics (presumably me specifically) as "just media junkies with unhealthy copy editor proclivities."  I suppose I'll disappoint him by not "foaming" over his attempted Iraq comparison.  I will, however, say that the discussion over whether there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq is not the same as a discussion as to what the term "American" means.  In the former situation, the issue is whether a credible threat exists or does not.  In the latter, the issue is what to name the problem.  So if Chris Reed wants a metaphor, I'm afraid I'll have to reject his.  I'd compare it more to discussions over how destructive the nuclear arsenals of the U.S. and U.S.S.R. were during the Cold War.  Arguing over how many times over the world could be destroyed just isn't particularly relevant.  If you want to argue the facts, you of course can, but why would you think it was relevant to the discussion of how to prevent the world from ending?

So here's what it boils down to: Are the statistics which Reed complains about misleading? I don't think so, but he does.  Either way, does it change the relevant points of the health care debate in the slightest? No.  So we can discuss, I suppose, the best way to name statistics.  But if Chris Reed were to get his victory and all news outlets change the wording of their reports, then what? We still have 47 million people in this country without health coverage and we haven't spent our time trying to solve that problem, even in the slightest.  Yes, the media needs to be accountable and accurate, and by all means, let's continue to call them on inaccuracies.  But let's not for a second think that, the immediacy or gravity of the health care crisis in this country is, in any way, altered by how we subdivide the people who are suffering.