[caption id=”attachment_83800″ align=”aligncenter” width=”1024″]AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall, File
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On the Internet, boring verbs like “startle” just won’t do. Ted Cruz startles 3 year old with ‘world on fire’ comment is an accurate if relatively bland headline, meaning that it’s less likely to get clicked than something eye-catching like . . .
“The World Is On Fire!”: Ted Cruz’s Speech Terrifies 3-Year-Old Girl, Ted Cruz Scares Little Girl: ‘Your World Is on Fire’, WATCH: Ted Cruz scares young girl with fiery N.H. speech. Those are headlines worthy of attention. They reinforce a partisan notion that Ted Cruz is one crazy Republican — and not only that, he beckons the tears of children. So if you’re writing a headline and you’re on the fence . . . you just roll with the report that Ted Cruz frightened the bejeezus out of some mom’s poor young child. It’s just too good. Right-wing nut makes kid bawl. Yeah. That’ll do it.
Here’s what happened this weekend. Cruz spoke to a gathering in New Hampshire, breaking out some of his greatest hits (the Obama economy is “a disaster,” and Obamacare “a trainwreck”). He concluded, emphatically, that “the whole world is on fire.”
3-year-old Julia, in attendance with her mother, spoke up in a high-pitched voice: “The world is on fire?”
The audience laughed. Cruz played along for a few moments and declared, “Your mommy’s here and everyone’s here to make sure the world you grow up in is better.”
The crowd applauded. Sometime afterward, news reports from the event used variations on the headlines mentioned above, and the incident was tweeted to the same effect. According to Julia’s mother, however, her daughter had no such reaction.
“[She] was quite happy, and then she wanted a cookie,” the mother, Michelle Trant, told Boston talk radio personality Jeff Kuhner.
She added that she talked to a Washington Post reporter after the event, and was unsure how word got out that Julia was emotionally devastated.
Always remember: The headline might be going just a bit too far.
