Sometimes, the headline raises more than one question: “Quadruple amputee cornhole player fatally shoots man, authorities say.” That is a very efficient headline: It raises many more questions than there are verbs in it. The first sentence of the story from ESPN answers none of these questions and, in fact, raises a couple more: “A county sheriff’s office in Maryland said Monday that a professional cornhole player who is also a quadruple amputee fatally shot a passenger in the front seat of a car he was driving during an argument.”
Wait—there are professional cornhole players?
People who take an interest in voting fraud have been told—lectured—over and over again, for many years, that voting fraud is not a thing, that there is no evidence of fraud’s having changed the outcome of any American election. And yet there are those provocative headlines, e.g.:
Kevin D. Williamson is national correspondent at The Dispatch and is based in Virginia. Prior to joining the company in 2022, he spent 15 years as a writer and editor at National Review, worked as the theater critic at the New Criterion, and had a long career in local newspapers. He is also a writer in residence at the Competitive Enterprise Institute. When Kevin is not reporting on the world outside Washington for his Wanderland newsletter, you can find him at the rifle range or reading a book about literally almost anything other than politics.
