baffled
I don’t mean to imply that journalists/editors should have to get their stories & headlines “approved” by sources or anything, but doesn’t it seem like with some words, you should really have to check?
Take this example.
Maybe McCain said “baffled” at some point in the interview. “I am baffled by this controversy.” I can picture that. Or maybe they said something like “Senator, would you describe your reaction to this controversy as ‘baffled’?” But I doubt it, since they don’t actually quote him saying that in the article, and it makes me wonder if the editor (or whoever does the headlines on the website) was trying to punch things up with a cool word, and just thought “baffled” was cool, kind of like “unfurled”.
The only problem with that is that it conveys a sense of confusion, instead of say, disagreement, because that’s exactly what my first reaction was (and why I just sort of reflexively clicked the link from Google News). I thought, “hmm, John McCain is legitimately confused by a question, that sounds interesting”, probably because my own internal biases associate McCain, who is 70-something, and has been made fun of a lot (fairly or unfairly) for being old, with confusion and general bafflement. After all, I bet there are a lot of things that legitimately “baffle” 75 year old rich guys, but of course, those are oftentimes very different from things they just flat-out disagree with or don’t like. For instance, it may be technically true that McCain was “baffled” by why he didn’t win the 2008 election, but it’s not like he doesn’t actually understand what happened. Really, he was just “surprised”.
I think this is what happens when we focus too much on controversies related to what people think, and not enough on whether what certain people think actually has any impact on the world around them. By necessity, you start focusing describing what people are thinking and feeling, which is an obviously inexact science, and then you end up describing people as “baffled”, even if that makes me think of something more akin to this :
It isn’t the worst example of headline grabbing by any stretch of the imagination, or even the funniest. But I still think it’s a subtle form of lazy click-bait, and it makes me realize how annoyed I’d probably be with 90% of the press about me if I were a public figure. “I didn’t say baffled!!! Who said baffled???” Plus, this particular article annoys me because, as I said, it basically took advantage of my own internal biases, and I really don’t like when that happens.
UPDATE : Okay, “puzzled” it is. Notice how they put it in quotes? I’m glad we got that cleared up; I got to Photoshop something, and now I can go back to not caring about this story.
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