Thursday, April 10, 2014

After

Headline at the Chicago Trib online tonight:

"Obama's health secretary resigns after Obamacare launch woes"

I want to focus on that preposition, "after". My father keeps complaining that modern journalists use "after" in place of "because". Possibly they've been exposed to Hume's theory that you never really know a causal chain - all you ever know is a sequence of events.

But what strikes me is how long after the "launch woes" it took for her to leave. Or maybe I'm wrong. Maybe we've only begun to know what a mess we've landed in.

Someone has to be the goat -
they'll wipe their sins upon her coat
and send her off - look - there she goes -
bearing the blame for our woes.

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