Argument by Anecdote

Reading through today's edition of America's Worst Newspaper, I was briefly alarmed. It seemed as though there was no particulary shoddy reporting, only minimally misplaced priorities, few gaping holes in logic, and barely a biased, trashy article in the whole journal. I quickly checked to make sure that I was reading The State.

I was. I began to get nervous.

There was no need to worry, though. As sure as the sun rises in the morning, The State stinks, every Monday through Friday. (Why is it that they're often less horrible on the weekends? One of the many mysteries in our grand universe, I guess.)

Anyway, once I got to the "Life & Style" section, I found an article that was so utterly miserable, my jaw dropped to the floor. When it comes to being disappointing, The State does not disappoint.

Even the title is a klunker: "Social Security is about People." (The web title is slightly better.) This is about as informative as "Climate is about Temperature and Humidity." Thanks!

But it's the substance of the article that's odious. Basically, Claudia Smith Brinson tries to explain the workings of the federal government's largest entitlement program by a single anecdote. Usually, when authors use personal stories instead of aggregate data, we shake our heads and politely recite the Stats 101 dictum, "the plural of 'anecdote' is not 'data.'" In this case, we can't even do that; Brinson doesn't even use more than one anecdote! How does she imagine that she's explaining anything by telling the single story of Inez Williams? Could it be that Williams story is so all-encompassing that it represents the tens of millions of former, current, and future Social Security recipients?

It is to laugh.

Brinson--obviously embarassed by her own hackwork--eventually trots out a few statistics that she cribbed from the far-Left Economic Policy Institute (which sometimes does good work) and some obscure outfit called the Institute for Women's PolicyResearch. But it's all just for show. She'd rather just tell us the story of a destitute elderly woman who continues to make quilts at 92. It's a nice human interest story; it doesn't tell us much about social security.

Brinson's treatment of the facts--when she bothers to pay attention to them--is full of whoppers. I particularly like the one where she claims that all women over 75 are widows:

Since women live longer than men, our oldest women — those 75 and older — are without spouses.

Brinson's journalism is so horrific, one doesn't know whether to laugh, cry, or simply avert one's eyes.

Look, there are serious people doing serious analysis of Social Security reform from the Left and the Right. Even amateurs are doing serious work.

So why is The State making a joke out of one of the most important issues in the country?

Comments: Post a Comment