Leftist Pollyanna-ism:  "The Boston Globe" as "Pravda"

Leftists always claim to do good.  So they have a strong motivation to assert that they actually achieve that.  And they most certainly wish to avoid acknowledging that there is anything wrong with what they do. That is why they try their damnedest to shut conservatives up -- because conservatives have this pesky attachment to reality.

So when Leftists gain control of a place, they tend to become Pollyannas, though not in the same sense as the original Pollyanna, who was a marvellous triumph of the human spirit. They become Pollyannas in the sense of refusing to see anything bad or faulty in their domain, their Reich.  For instance, Soviet newspapers such as  "Pravda" reported mostly good news, even if it was only a tractor factory fulfilling its quotas.

Most notable in the Communist countries of the last century was a failure to report airliner crashes if such reports could be avoided.  Though pesky American satellites often revealed the truth.  And it was the same in China.  And in both countries the result was the same.  In the absence of any public uproar about the negligence or inefficiency that had led to the crashes, nothing was fixed and there were a lot of crashes, far more than happened in the West.  It ended up with crashed Ilyushins scattered throughout Eurasia. The Ilyushin design bureau turned out very robust aircraft but Soviet maintenance was abysmal. If Soviet tank armies had ever surged Westward, most of them would probably have broken down.

So it's amusing that The Boston Globe reads rather like Pravda.  With Massachusetts having been under solid Democrat control for almost forever, anything that happens in Massachusetts is on the Democrat tab.  They are responsible for it so they have to wear it.  You could blame a lot on George Bush for a while but the age of Obama has pretty well nixed that.

But America is alive with all sorts of news media so you can't really hush much up for long.  So how does the Globe handle news about bad things happening in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts?  They mention it but downplay it and never mention it again if they can help it. They are Pollyannas.  Political problems are treated as minor or under control.  There is no raging at them or swingeing denunciations of them.  It is all "nice".  Rage is reserved for what happens in other parts of the USA, with Donald Trump being a Godsend for that at the moment -- as their recent much-noted front-page shows.

The Globe became one of my regular reads last year so it took me a while to "get" why the paper seemed so different.  But I can now encapsulate the difference.  It has a very "sunny" outlook.  All Massachusetts problems are small or under control. And when they can't avoid mentioning Pachyderms in rooms -- such as the abject failure of Romneycare -- they cover it in such a long-winded way  that it's hard to see the wood for the trees.  And all the detail tends to create the impression that the problem is being worked on.

There are many ways of lying and the Left have mastered them all.

Posted by John J. Ray (M.A.; Ph.D.).