In this all-pervasive Twitter age, journalists are constantly on guard against zingers that seem overly scripted. And news sites have found again and again that they make for easy listicles. Since then, politicians have discovered that zingers are what voters respond to – much more than actual policies. “That became the measure of success to a certain extent … Unless there is the zinger or the kind of the cute line or whatever, the quotable moment, there’s no victor in a sense,” Bush said. In one of his 1980 debates with President Jimmy Carter, Reagan drew laughter when he uttered the now-famous “There you go again” – a way of suggesting that Carter was regularly bending the truth. Bush, interviewed for a PBS special about his 2000 face-offs with Al Gore, credited Ronald Reagan with elevating the zinger’s importance. But by 1970, as political discourse became less civil and more confrontational, it turned into a catchy synonym for a barbed quip.įormer President George W. The Online Etymology Dictionary says that in 1957, it was baseball slang for a pitcher’s fastball that caught unsuspecting hitters off guard. “Zinger” is one of many political words originating in the sports world. ![]() Zinger: A supposedly spontaneous clever one-liner that has become a leading measuring stick – to some, the only measuring stick – for success in a debate. That is an awesome responsibility and a revolutionary opportunity. ![]() Even when the world is unkind, we can be unmoved in our determination to love, to build, to seek credible hope. Never to excuse or ignore cruelty or crime, but to recognize that how we view the world shapes the world. What is the media’s responsibility?Author and anti-apartheid activist Alan Paton once said of the Monitor, “It gives no shrift to any belief in the irredeemable wickedness of man, nor in the futility of human endeavor.”In addition to reporting acts of kindness, perhaps a next step is to see the world through a lens of kindness. But can this elevation only happen with stories of kindness? Must the rest of the news abandon us to despair?The world is asking us to consider that question deeply. She defined kindness and heroism as “moral beauty,” which “triggers ‘elevation’ – a positive and uplifting feeling” that “acts as an emotional reset button, replacing feelings of cynicism with hope, love and optimism.”The study suggested this happens when one watches a news story about kindness after watching ones about bombings, cruelty, and violence. They support “the belief that the world and people in it are good.” And they provide “relief to the pain we experience when we see others suffering.”It was her fourth point that stuck with me. ![]() ![]() A week ago, a British researcher published an article titled “Stories of kindness may counteract the negative effects of looking at bad news.” As you might imagine, I was intrigued.Kathryn Buchanan of the University of Essex shared four main takeaways from her research: Stories of kindness remind us of our shared values.
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