HATE MONGERING: Revival of an American Sport

The 15 Papers That Didn't Mention
Health Care on
the Front Page

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Dylan Stableford
Published: March 22, 2010
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Nearly every newspaper in America devoted at least part of their front pages on Monday to Sunday night’s historic vote on health care.

But not all. Of 406 U.S. newspaper covers uploaded to Newseum.org on Monday, 15 did not mention the health care vote.
For some of them, the vote probably occurred too late for their deadlines. (Others opted to run stories acknowledging a vote was taking place.)

Here are the aforementioned 15, along with the subjects of their top front-page stories:


Benton County Daily Herald, Bentonville, Arkansas
Spring snowstorm.


Northwest Arkansas Times, Fayetteville, Arkansas
"Overnight accumulation leaves
 Northwest Arkansas roads slippery."

The Morning News, Rogers, Arkansas
Spring snowstorm.

Stars and Stripes, Washington, D.C.
NCAA “bracket busters.”
Palm Beach Daily News, Palm Beach, Florida
"Census Forms Arriving in the Mail."


Tampa Bay Times, St. Petersburg, Florida
A story on Hollywood's suddenly feeble
leading men pegged to Ben Stiller's
"Greenberg" character.


Commercial-News, Danville, Illinois
Photos of a maple syrup open house.


Herald-Press, Huntington, Indiana
School staff reduction.


Peru Tribune, Peru, Indiana

A local cattle show.

Wabash Plain Dealer, Wabash, Indiana

Fatal car crash at intersection kills two.


Cecil Whig, Elkton, Maryland
Fire destroys home and runaway emu found.


AMnewyork, New York City
Teen subway mugging.


The High Point Enterprise, High Point, North Carolina
"Bus seat belts not likely."


The Mount Airy News, Mount Airy, North Carolina
"Boy Scouts learn skills at Merit Badge College."

Bluffton Today, Bluffton, South Carolina

Construction of a new middle school gym.

But just because health care made the front cover didn’t mean it was always the biggest story. Tiger Woods’ first interviews since his sex scandal split some tabloids, like the Boston Herald.

For others, local stories were played just as big. In Duluth, for instance, Obama’s health bill had to fight with the University of Minnesota-Duluth’s triple overtime victory in the NCAA Division I women’s hockey final, and Joe Mauer’s $184 million contract extension with the Minnesota Twins. In the Rio Grande Valley, it was “mutton rides.”

UPDATE: Howard Witt, senior editor at Stars and Stripes, takes issue with their inclusion on "this list of shame":

"We are a newspaper published for U.S. troops overseas, hence our deadline is 2pm EST each day. Which means the health care vote occurred fully 9 hours after our deadline. We are of course putting the story on our front page in the next available edition, namely Tuesday’s."

Let me say up front that I am very happy Health Care Reform passed the Congress and was signed into law by Pres. Obama. As Vice Pres. Biden was recorded saying to the President yesterday "It's a big F_ _ _ I N G deal!" Indeed it is. If you've ever been without insurance coverage and needed it, you know what I mean.

In fact, as far as I am concerned the reforms didn't go far enough. I'd have been out of my gourd happy if they approved a single payer system. Make it comprehensive, as if great health care were truly universal, like all of the rest of the industrialized world. Health care should be a right for every American citizen, not any kind of guessing game. Illness is not a trivial matter. Neither is proper preventitive care. I say thank God we are finally and formally going to institute changes that will start this nation on the road to better health for all.

That being said I must also tell you the digusting, racist, homophobic and all around tragically uninformed "Glenn Beckian" behavior exhibited by the vast majority of teabaggers in Washington DC the day of the vote by the House of Representatives
sickened me. We have seen this ugliness from these festering puss wounds over and over again. What happened in D.C. over the weekend is just another incident in a long line of such dangerous behavior. I understand there is deep anger in this country but these morons are getting carried away to the Nth degree and can no longer be tolerated.

These vicious dullards attacked the senior African-American members of the House of Representatives with an avalanche of "N word" epithets. They then went after Barney Frank in a mass exhibition of homophobia that is apparently both a chronic and acute condition for these radical right wing DOUFI (pronounced "doof-eye", which means the plural of the word "doufus" ). All of it seems the byproduct of both the Republican Party, which uses the teabaggers as their own home grown "shock troops" reminiscent of the Brown Shirts during Hitler's rise to power, and the official press arm of the Republican National Committee, Fox News. (I do not see how they are a "news" operation...they live and broadcast in an alternate universe inside a different dimension)

In terms of the "list of shame" newspapers that did not run the Health Care Reform Bill's passage story on their front pages, I am amazed more didn't refuse to do so. Yes, with the exception of "Stars and Stripes", most of these papers are located in parts of the country well known to be staunchly Republican and teabagger full.  For the most part they are also places where white supremisists,  KKK and anti-immigration protests are very common. These states are a collection of absolute teabagger, rageful people producing parts of the country.

What utter hypocracy. I understand if people are angry about the country's economic situation. But these cretins lack the mental acuity to correctly assess blame for their financial state. It was the Republicans under Bush who increased the deficit for 8 straight years. At the same time they loosened all controls on banks and other financial institutions put in place by a Democratic Congress and FDR during the Great Depression, regulations that would have stopped "credit default swaps" and the use of "derivatives" which almost lead to the collapse of the Western World's economies. It was the Bush White House that started the huge "too Big to Fail" bailouts. Yet these idiots are so uneducated, so easily led by the likes of Glenn Beck and Sean Hannity of Fox News and Rush Limbaugh's hate filled rantings, they happily become the army of derision for anything done by a Democratic  Congress or the first African-American President in the country's history. "Gimme back my country" indeed.

Look, just take a gander of the pics I include above and you'll get a fast idea of just how sick and sorry these teabagging zealots are. What they are doing and saying is both dangerous and ominous. For all their talk of freedom they are the ones trying to intimidate others from exercising their rights under the law. They should be ashamed for letting the Republicans use them to a particular political end by joining them in support of tactics like the big lie (anyone remember DEATH PANELS?)  violent intimidation (remember the teabaggers wearing GUNS outside Health Care Reform information sessions?) and endless amounts of hate speech. It's probably only a matter of time until someone else is shot and killed, just like the deranged white supremisist who shot an African American guard at the Holocost Museam in Washington, DC many months ago. The nutjobs will be crawling out of the woodworks. You listen to Michelle Bachman (above) , a notorious  "walnut headed" Repblican member of the House of Representatives who routinely employs the "big lie" and "hate speech" and you tell me that it hasn't been this way for a long while already!

Hmmmmm...I  LIKE these folks!

This was no regular news story. It really was a big deal to pass Health Care Reform. We have made universal health care one giant step closer to reality. The stock market hasn't collapsed, the tides still flow and unlike "Rosemary's Baby" there are no pointy headed, all red babies being born to waif like caucasian girls that would prove President Obama is the antichrist. No, in fact the new polls show a majority of people in America already approve of the new law 49% to 40% disapproving. Soon, the approval percentage will start to skyrocket as more and more people, including some out of work teabagger families with kids out of high school and under 26, or  those with pre-existing conditions, find out for themselves what they had been saying about Health Care Reform simply is not true. Oh and don't forget grandma and grandpa - no DEATH PANELS!!! If the Republicans think they've got a winning issue here for the Fall elections, the "Party Of NO"  has a rude awakening headed their way. They blew this one badly.