July 17, 2022

You know what?

Here's a list of headlines beginning with "What" that are currently displayed on the New York Times homepage.
  1. "What a relief that Janeane Garofalo never sold out, our critic writes"
  2. "What Will Happen if Doctors Defy the Law to Provide Abortions?"
  3. "What to Know About BA.5"
  4. "What Joe Manchin Cost Us"
  5. "What It Means to See America in Person"
  6. "What Turns a Person Into a Mass Shooter?"
  7. "What I Learned When My Sister Got Sick"
  8. "What It Would Take for Your Team to Land Juan Soto"

24 comments:

Kevin said...

Who is Janeane Garogalo?

n.n said...

What are none; end of human rites; no; progressive prices; liberty; diversity [dogma], ethical religion, SSRI; she is human; home run.

Ann Althouse said...

"Who is Janeane Garogalo?"

Oh, that's so weird! I cut and pasted. It's spelled right now, so I've corrected it.

RideSpaceMountain said...

"What Will Happen if Doctors Defy the Law to Provide Abortions?"

They'll probably get their state licenses revoked. Just like doctors who advocated for ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine were threatened with getting their licenses revoked.

Your body something something your choice something something.

Ice Nine said...

Garofalo was that rare bird - a female comedian who is, consistently at least, funny. Too bad about her shitty career. She earned it. She did in fact have an up-front tiresome misanthropic vibe. And she was a far Lefty, and she told you about it at most every opportunity. It always struck me that the latter was more important to her than her career. In any event, I'm sure that lots of people were like me and got sick of all that.

Kate said...

How funny to hear the name Janeane Garofalo. We recently wanted to watch the Bill Murray movie where his dad, the estranged circus clown, wills him his elephant. It has Garofalo, and I realized I hadn't heard of her in years. She was a B/A-lister for a whisper of a moment.

Lash LaRue said...

WTF?

Rollo said...

"What Joe Manchin Cost Us"

"Us"?

After high school, Janeane Garofalo went to Providence College, told another student she thought Reagan was an okay president, and got a long, angry lecture in response. The rest in history.

narciso said...

most likely they will get awards from the jfk center et al,

before she dyed her hair white, she seemed sane, then again by the time she cameod on '24, she seems to have lost the plot
so did sarah silverman, back when she was a guess star on JAG

Yancey Ward said...

I had the same reaction to the the Garofalo heading- a name I hadn't seen or read in almost a decade now.

richlb said...

What a shame Janeane Garogalo was never funny. Also, find it ironic that she "never sold out" despite starring in "The Truth About Cats and Dogs."

Achilles said...

"What a relief that Janeane Garofalo never sold out, our critic writes"

Comedians usually sell out to their audiences right?

"What Will Happen if Doctors Defy the Law to Provide Abortions?"

They will probably have violent abortionists outside their homes and have to deal with firebombings.

"What to Know About BA.5"

Isn't that AB 5? It means a bunch of truckers will no longer work in California.

"What Joe Manchin Cost Us"

He cost the leftists billions in graft. He saved taxpayers billions in taxes and inflation.

"What It Means to See America in Person"

Says someone typing from their New York apartment.

"What Turns a Person Into a Mass Shooter?"

The most common factor is lack of a father in the home.

"What I Learned When My Sister Got Sick"

Something that makes leftists feel good about themselves surely.

"What It Would Take for Your Team to Land Juan Soto"

Nobody cares anymore.

PM said...

You can thank David Ogilvy for those types of headlines. imo.

MadisonMan said...

I wonder if focus groups have been used to determine (cough) what is needed to get people to click a headline.

Not Sure said...

In order to sell out, you have to have at least one prospective buyer.

Narr said...

What did we do to deserve all this?

Bunkypotatohead said...

I give her props for having no social media presence.
And the plastic surgery is keeping her youthful looking.

Quaestor said...

"Oh, that's so weird! I cut and pasted."

Old Ziggy Freud would not have judged weird.

madAsHell said...

I'm sorry. I've wrapped my life around multiple-generations of women.......but this is what women like to read.

StephenFearby said...

Journalism 101 (Which I was incisively taught by the retired 80-something-year-old editor of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle.) My first try came back with a C-. Then I learned the importance of the 5 W's.

Who, What, When, Where, Why.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Ws#:~:text=The%20Five%20Ws%20(sometimes%20referred,)%2C%20research%20and%20police%20investigations.

The NYT was apparently just practicing its Whats.

Ann Althouse said...

"Old Ziggy Freud would not have judged weird."

How do you figure that? I cut and pasted. I'm positive that what I published is what the NYT published.

Ann Althouse said...

"Journalism 101 (Which I was incisively taught by the retired 80-something-year-old editor of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle.) My first try came back with a C-. Then I learned the importance of the 5 W's."

I thought about that, but the "what" in all of these headlines isn't that kind of "what." It's not the case that something happened and there needs to be a news report.

Some are speculating about the future: "What Will Happen if Doctors Defy the Law to Provide Abortions?" "What Joe Manchin Cost Us" "What It Would Take for Your Team to Land Juan Soto."

Others are musing about why things happen: "What Turns a Person Into a Mass Shooter?"

Or conveying a personal experience that isn't about news at all: "What It Means to See America in Person," "What I Learned When My Sister Got Sick."

"What to Know About BA.5." gives background on an ongoing matter.

One is an exclamation: "What a relief that Janeane Garofalo never sold out, our critic writes"

Ann Althouse said...

I think traditional journalism following the 5 W's would not lead to headlines that begin with "What," but things more like "Fire Destroys Downtown Building, Kills 3." You wouldn't write: "What Damage Fire Can Do."

Bruce Hayden said...

What is there to say about BA.5?

That’s easy - it’s an Omicron subvariant, which means that it may be slightly more contagious, but no more fatal, than other Omicron subvariants. We are talking a bad flu level virus. Oh, and if the various vaccines ever were effective, they aren’t against all of the Omicron subvariants, because those vaccines generate the spike proteins from the ancestral variant, which the original Omicron variant successfully mutated around, by tweaking those spike proteins. It’s called a vaccine mismatch. The vaccine no longer matches the virus it is supposed to fight. Which brings up the question, of why are they still suggesting, even mandating, vaccinations with a vaccine that no longer matches the pathogen being vaccinated against?

Of course, these vaccines were a bad idea from the first. It is completely new technology that hasn’t been adequately tested. The FDA, despite shoddy testing, and plenty of adverse side effects, waived them through, regardless. Esp the mRNA vaccines repeatedly hammer immune systems with, essentially, massive quantities of these spike proteins, in bodily locations where they are not expected, which often results in massive immune responses, depleting immune system resources. The first shot imprinted the knowledge of these spike proteins as pathogens, and the 2nd and subsequent jabs just fire off immune responses to the spike proteins. But Original Antigenic Sin (OAS) means that immune systems imprint much less well when faced with the actual virus, resulting in a much weaker natural immunity if vaccinated first. Hence, esp in view of the vaccine mismatch with Omicron, why the bulk of those currently catching, and recatching COVID-19 were previously vaccinated. The only Justice in the world is that Dr Fauci keeps catching the virus, and each time it appears to hit him harder.

Of course, since this is the NYT, that reality is likely studiously ignored.