By Aula Minerva
Spy Archivist
The recent announcement that House Republicans want to default on the sovereign debt of the United States unless Democrats agree to gut Social Security and Medicare has produced the usual both-sides coverage. Here's but one example from the Pez dispenser of conventional wisdom, The New York Times's Carl Hulse:
This framing is, as Media Matters has pointed out, bonkers:
If Republicans really want to slash spending – including to Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid – that’s their right.....
But they don’t seem interested in trying that, presumably for the same reason that unified Republican governments under Presidents Trump and George W. Bush didn’t lead to massive spending cuts – those cuts would be incredibly unpopular and would likely destroy the party’s political standing.
Instead, the GOP plan for cutting spending is to try to force the Democrats to agree to (maybe even propose) the cuts as the price to avert global economic catastrophe. That sounds insane when you write it out, so a big part of the strategy is trying to prevent the press from doing so. The party’s leaders and its propagandists are busy working the refs.
It's essentially extortion: Republicans will plunge the world economy into disaster unless Democrats agree to their demands to starve grandma, not to mention poor children. That's not Both Sides.
But the prevalence of this ridiculous false framing got us to wonder if the media had ever in past used it to describe events to which it arguably did not apply. Fortunately, for most of its 253 years of publication, the Spy subscribed and printed reports from The New York Times and other news services, and our archives turned up the following gems:
April 14, 1861:
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IT IS WAR! MASSACHUSETTS TO THE COLORS! REGIMENTS MUSTERING NOW!  ⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻ FORT SUMTER SURRENDERS TO REBEL FORCES BOTH SIDES HELD TO BLAME FOR IMPASSE LINCOLN MUST NEGOTIATE OVER SLAVERY IN TERRITORIES, SOUTH SAYS From the Spy's News Services (via Telegraph) The unprovoked secessionist attack on Fort Sumter, which guards Charleston Harbor, South Carolina has stirred in the minds of many a lust to thrash the Rebels and reunite the Union. Yet other respected sources around the nation note that both sides were to blame for the current deadlock.
Informed sources in Washington City have told reporters for the Washington Times and the Richmond Dispatch that the attack was caused by President Lincoln's reckless and aggressive decision to reinforce the fort, surrounded as it is by territory claimed by the new “Confederacy.” “If only the zealots of the Black Republican Party had negotiated in good faith with South Carolina for the peaceful turnover of the facility to the local government, this entire conflict could have been avoided,” said a source close to leading Virginia General Robert E. Lee. “The South tried its best to avoid these sanguinary proceedings but Old Abe's obstinacy prevented a peaceful resolution.” These critics pointed to the breakdown of recent negotiations in Washington that would have reunited the Union as long as Northern states were willing to let slaveholders bring their brutalized human chattels into all U.S. territories and assist slaveholders in the return of their lawful property found in Northern states. “If only the Republican extremists were willing to meet the legitimate concerns of the South half-way, we could have reunited the United States on a basis that our glorious Founding Fathers, almost all of whom held humans in bondage, would have recognized in an instant,” said influential advisers to Virginia politico Jefferson Davis. In a broadside issued under the pseudonym “CONCERNED AMERICAN” but widely thought to represent the consensus of informed white men in the Upper South, the author warned, “We can limit the amount of blood shed in this stalemate to a veritable thimble as long as Republicans agree to negotiation and moderation and the triumph of slavery. If they won't meet us halfway, there is no alternative to war.” |
March 8, 1932:
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DISTRIBUTIONS OF EDIBLE SWILL ANNOUNCED BY AREA RESTAURANTS
⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻ LINDBERGH URGED TO NEGOTIATE WITH KIDNAPPERS; From Spy News Services
The failure to resolve the ongoing kidnapping of the baby of famed American aviator Charles A. Lindbergh has raised questions about the handling of the case by the New Jersey State Police, which has at least in public ruled out negotiating ransom with the baby's kidnappers. Sources close to the investigation note that Col. Lindbergh is considering ignoring the advice. “In any kidnapping there is a conflict between the kidnapper and the family and friends of the victim. The best way to resolve the conflict is through dialogue and negotiation,” said sources close to J. Edgar Hoover, who is advising the New Jersey authorities on how to resolve the matter, which has transfixed the nation eager for even more bad news after almost four years of crippling economic depression. In public, however, Hoover is projecting firmness. At a press conference held yesterday in Washington City, the director, clad in a stunning dark-blue silk shantung frock with matching hat and gloves, he said “there can be no negotiation with terrorists and criminals. Giving them an inch would be as ridiculous as wearing a black handbag with a blue outfit. It is unthinkable.” Lindbergh is known to be unhappy with the advice he is being given by U.S. law enforcement authorities and is seeking guidance from some of his distinguished foreign friends. “I'm a great believer in the view that both sides must reach out together to resolve difficult questions, like the menace of international Jewry, so I'm urging my good friend Col. Lindbergh to reach out to the kidnappers and work on a negotiated solution,” said the man whom Col. Lindbergh is said to respect more than any other leader, German Chancellor Adolf Hitler. |
December 9, 1941
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IT IS WAR AGAIN! RECRUITING STATIONS OPEN!
⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻⸻ ROOSEVELT CALLS FOR ALL-OUT WAR ON JAPAN AS From the Chicago Tribune News Service With the U.S. Pacific Fleet lying at the bottom of Pearl Harbor following the sneak attack Sunday morning by the Japanese Empire, President Franklin D. Roosevelt has called upon the United States to exercise every effort to defeat Japan.
But influential critics of Roosevelt's war policy have told the Tribune that they believe that Both Sides are to blame for the eruption of hostilities [Late cable to The Spy – Further air attacks reported on Manila] and both the United States and Japan should negotiate a peaceful solution to the Pacific war. Sources close to distinguished North Dakota Senator and America Firster Gerald Nye have said that Roosevelt is to blame for the current calamity.
“If Roosevelt had only been willing to sit down and negotiate with the Japanese on their reasonable requests for continued imports of oil and scrap metal and accommodated their desire for an Open Fist [Surely, Door? – Wire Ed.] policy in China, Japan would be only too happy to continue the current state of affairs, which has brought co-prosperity throughout East Asia,” these sources told the Tribune on the condition that they remain anonymous so that they would not be indicted for violations of the Espionage Act. White House advisers have stumbled in responding to these concerns, preferring to stress the dastardly nature of the attack and the need for a unified American response. But some Washington pundits believe that Roosevelt's failure to come clean about his unwillingness to compromise with the Japanese empire will cause the nation to be unwilling to give him “the benefit of the doubt” when questions arise about the conduct of the war. Republican critics of Roosevelt's aggressive foreign policy fear that the President is repeating the same mistakes with Germany that could lead soon to war with them. “Instead of compromising with Herr Hitler and finding areas of bipartisan cooperation, such as the fight against Soviet Communism, Roosevelt is beating the drums of war,” Senator Burton K. Wheeler (D – Prussia) told the Tribune's owner, Col. R.R. McCormick. In Tokyo, sources close to Prime Minister Tojo have told the Asahi Shimbun that despite the current breakdown in relations between the Japanese Empire and the United States, Japan remains ready to compromise on all issues related to the conflict as long as their historical claims to China, Indo-China, and the Indies are recognized. “Why not avoid the unpleasantness of all-out war and negotiate? Japan is ready to listen to any concrete proposals the United States may have to restore the peace and address Japan's legitimate interests as the ruling power in Asia,” the Imperial spokesman said. |
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