...and when there is bad news, the bad news is always "unexpected."
Jim Geraghty documents and analyzes the media's use of the word "unexpected" in discussing the poor performance of the economy during the Obama years:
In the Obama years, bad news has always surprised the media.If this bad news really is "unexpected", then we are truly screwed since we are in the hands of total incompentents.
It is the most common adverb of the Obama years: “unexpectedly.”
● “Sales of U.S. previously owned homes unexpectedly dropped in July,” reported Bloomberg.
● “Manufacturing in the Philadelphia region unexpectedly contracted in August by the most in more than two years as orders plunged and factories shed workers,”reported Bloomberg Businessweek.
● “Consumer spending unexpectedly fell in June,” reported Reuters.
● “Dismal economic data on Thursday pointed to an unexpectedly abrupt slowdown in manufacturing and a pickup in inflation,” reported the New York Times’ business page.
This is just in the past week; hundreds of articles each month note that some new bit of economic data is contrary to the expectations of experts. But the term is starting to become an object of ridicule within the conservative blogosphere as the country endures its third year of hard economic times under President Obama.
Three years after a financial crisis, unemployment has hit painful highs, GDP growth has been sluggish at best, and some predict a “double dip” recession. During this period, the Obama administration and its allies have repeatedly made bold promises about imminent prosperity — from an infamous chart that projected that the stimulus would keep unemployment rate below 8 percent, to the administration’s “Recovery Summer” tour of 2010, to Nancy Pelosi’s prediction that passing Obamacare would create 400,000 jobs “almost immediately,” to the president’s prediction that we would enjoy 3.1 percent growth this year and 4.1 percent growth in 2012 and beyond.
For about three years now, conservative bloggers have chuckled at how frequently the unveiling of bad economic news comes with the adverb “unexpectedly” in media reports. As Instapundit’s Glenn Reynolds, Michael Barone, and others have often asked, unexpected to whom?
“I think it’s a combination of cognitive dissonance, the terra nova nature of the post-bubble economy, and a healthy dose of partisanship,” suggests Ed Morrissey, who has blogged about the ubiquitous adverb regularly at HotAir.com.
Perhaps the perpetual surprise reflects a media desire to focus on pockets of growth or prosperity — at least with a Democrat in the White House. In a widely diversified $14 trillion economy, one can almost always find some areas of economic improvement.
Certainly, a media that wanted to paint a more dire portrait of the economy would have no shortage of material to work with. There’s considerable evidence that America’s problems in job creation are much worse than the most widely cited numbers would indicate.
On the other hand, we may be alright so long as the people in charge do not really believe this spin.
On yet another hand, the risk is that our leaders start believing their own spin and fall victim to the "Taranto Effect" by believing their own press clippings. It's also a violation of the Jenkins' Dicta - named after a Fresno bankruptcy attorney whose sage advice was, "Never forget, the worse thing you can do is to believe your own bullshit."
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