Headlines are an odd art. You must summarize the story in a few words — in print, that is. With search engine optimization, online headlines tend to be these long, triple deck affairs redolent of an elaborate, almost Victorian complexity. Where once “Asteroid to hit earth?” would suffice, now we see, “Hurtling space asteroid on possible collision course, could destroy earth and all life upon it, including Taylor Swift.”
Otherwise, brevity is still valued. Wit too. The Sun-Times is famous for both, often in the same headline: “DA POPE!” comes to mind, celebrating the joyful Chicago roots of the current vicar of Christ.
Long or short, the goal of any headline is to draw readers into a story. Plus accurately reflect both the story and reality. An article on Holocaust deniers should not be headlined, “Holocaust a hoax.”
Though sometimes, fidelity to truth gets lost.
Such as the headline on page A5 of The New York Times Monday: “Trump Has Moved the Boundaries of What Is Ethical.”
He has?! That is news. Because while the president’s second term has been noteworthy for ramping up the deceit, self-dealing, corruption and institution-shredding of his first administration, I have not gotten the memo that these things are now acceptable.
The article, by Peter Baker, the Times’ veteran chief White House correspondent, begins by recounting how, seven years ago, when Trump tried to host the G7 summit at his own golf club, Trump National Doral Miami, “It incited an uproar among fellow Republicans, forcing him to scrap the idea.”
No such trouble in 2026. Now his club is hosting the summit with “practically no protest.” Which is true. The Republicans, whether active co-conspirators, or dazed hostages agreeing with their captor’s every demand, are docile as sheep, with only the occasional soft bleat of anything that could, perhaps, be considered dissent.
Leading to the third paragraph, where we encounter what could be either another glaring untruth, or merely the kind of tone-deaf clunk that The New York Times is famous for, at least to this subscriber:
“The unprecedented blitz of self-enrichment by Mr. Trump,” — the Times still uses honorifics, which is so cute, so old-school — “his family and his friends since he returned to the White House last year has become so extensive, so profligate and so brazen that he has effectively moved the goal posts of what is considered out of bounds.”
Has he now? Moved those goalposts to the 30 yard line, where he scores lucrative goal after goal? I consider the president accepting gifts, whether bricks of gold from ambassadors, or luxury jets from oil sheikhs, to still be out of bounds. I consider Trump using the government to enrich himself to the tune of, to use Baker’s figure, $2.2 billion and counting, to be completely unacceptable. As is his using taxpayer money to run commercials lauding himself. As is flouting the law by plastering his face on United States coins. As is making the government an artificial intelligence fanboy — whoops, he prefers “super intelligence fanboy” — to truckle his tech bro backers.
And on and on. And on. And on and on and on and on. Plus, you know, more.
To be fair, Baker catalogs what one watchdog calls “so much unprecedented and harmful corruption that it can be hard for the public to keep up with every story.” Baker can’t be faulted there. It’s the “so now it’s OK” tone that rattled me. It is not OK. It will never be OK.
Perhaps it is a matter of brevity. Maybe the original headline was “Trump Has Moved the Boundaries of What Is Ethical Among Co-Conspirators, Paid Lackeys, the Willfully Blind, and Cosseted East Coast Journalists Too Close to the Story to See the Forest from the Trees” but those last two dozen words were cut off in the editing process.
Here in the Midwest, however, breathing the free air of deep blue Illinois, we know the score. And we know what America stands for — the rule of law. Leaders who feel a responsibility to their constituents, whether a school district or an entire nation. Who try to do their jobs for the betterment of those constituents, for the people, and not line their pockets and turn the government into one vast chorus of self-praise. It’s wrong. It was wrong last year and the year before and the year before that.
However long this nadir of American history lasts — whether it begins to end next month or just keeps digging deeper — moral values have not changed. What has happened is, they have been abused and ignored so successfully for so long that some people apparently have forgotten what they are, or can’t imagine their return. I can.