Today in exactitude

Let's not get into the habit of banning parts of speech or anything around here, but you do have to admit that large parts of CNN would do better if they weren't allowed to use adverbs without adult supervision. Hence, we have more than a culinary interest in how exact the "exactly" is in "exactly how long." But first, some writering:

Like an inbox filled with emails about Black Friday sales, the one thing you can count on the day after Thanksgiving is a fridge packed with leftovers.

For many, this is easily the best part of the entire holiday -- but at a certain point, even the most devoted leftovers fans will question if that side dish is still OK to eat. 

Shall we start with a biscuit conditional?

Hmm. Any chance of a little more precision?

Ham
Keeps for: Three to four days

Mashed and sweet potatoes
Keeps for: Three to four days

Stuffing/dressing and gravy
Keeps for: Three to four days

But don't get the idea that they're just mailing it it:

Cranberry sauce
Keeps for: 10 to 14 days
Green bean casserole, macaroni and cheese and corn pudding
Keeps for: Three to five days

Hang on for an "about a week," if you want. But as is so often the case in life and cooking, the results are just as good if you start by leaving the adverbs out.

Here's Fox, telling a lie

The Fair 'n' Balanced Network is usually careful to keep the pivot foot down when the ref is looking, so it's fun to see an out-and-out lie in the lead story:

President Trump highlighted a key moment during Wednesday’s impeachment hearing to suggest the case against him was decidedly undercut by the witnesses, despite claims to the contrary by House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and fellow Democrats.

After reviewing the circumstances of Trump’s July 25 phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Rep. John Ratcliffe, R-Texas, asked the witnesses to state what impeachable offense Trump committed with the call. He did not get an answer. 

And it has to be true because there's a tweet, right?

Had you the good fortune to be reading the grownup press (even one with a bad case of local anesthesia), you might have noticed that he actually got a rather direct answer:

Taylor had said in his opening statement that he was not taking a position on impeachment. When Ratcliffe would not give Taylor time to respond, Schiff stepped in and said he could answer.

“Mr. Ratcliffe, I would just like to say that I’m not here to do anything having to do with the [decision] about impeachment,” Taylor said, “That is not what either of us are here to do. This is your job.”

In its own way, Fox does kinda-sorta admit to lying, but not very clearly:

“In this impeachment hearing today, where we impeach presidents for treason or bribery or other high crimes, where was the impeachable offense in that call? Are either of you here today to assert that there was an impeachable offense in that call? Shout it out. Anyone?”

Neither witness had an answer, but Taylor did say that he was not there to make that kind of decision.

It always bears repeating: The big gap in media coverage isn't between "conservative" and "liberal" outlets (especially since most of the notionally "liberal" ones are broadly center-right). The big gap is between organizations that make things up to please the party and ones that don't. If you've ever entertained any doubts about where Fox stands, you were misinformed.

Hey, good lookin'

Hmm. I wonder how we're supposed to be thinking about the central figure in this centerpiece. Maybe the online hed holds a clue!

Let's go a little farther into the mainbar:

What about the sidebar?

I'm not sure this is sinking in -- could you provide a physical description or something?

Maybe a reefer to tomorrow's story would help:

We've been over this before, but it's always worth remembering. Journalism doesn't do "objectivity" by grinding the lenses more finely, coding the data more thoroughly, devising ever-more-devious statistical tests or any of the other devil-trickery of positivism. We do objectivity by figuring out what "everybody thinks" and calibrating events -- man bites dog -- to that standard.

One of my favorite anecdotes in Gaye Tuchman's landmark "Objectivity as strategic ritual" is about the editor who complained that an obit wasn't objective because it described the subject as a "master musician." On finding out that "several paragraphs into the story, one learns the deceased had played with John Philip Sousa," he changed his mind. Sousa doesn't float everyone's boat, any more than everyone who hears "Take an umbrella to the soccer game tomorrow, moms and dads" on the Friday night news has kids or ferries them to soccer, but once enough people seem to be nodding along, the rest of us kind of fade into the background noise. It's Sousa, for heaven's sake.

One problem -- OK, one problem aside from the flexible definitions of "handsome" and the strange belief that Roman Catholics and football players are less susceptible to crime than we earthlings are -- is that when we mark off "everybody" by what we find surprising, we say more about ourselves than about our subjects. Knowing that somebody doesn't look like "your ordinary violent criminal" tells me that either (a) you don't keep up with violent crime very much or (b) this is your way of saying "white." I'm not assigning that motive to the writers here, but it is worth pointing out that the impression doesn't have to be given in the first place.