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On Monday, Fetterman returned to work! So Daily Kos posted an AP article about McConnell returning [1]

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Date: 2023-04-20  

Sen. John Fetterman (D-PA)

This past weekend I posted a diary noting a weird editorial choice Daily Kos made to publish an AP article about the suspect in the leaked U.S. intelligence case — weird because the article exhibited the same sort of journalistic dross that Daily Kos staff writer Mark Sumner had just hours earlier been deriding other media organs for.

Here’s another weird editorial choice. Two U.S. senators who had been absent for a while due to health issues both returned to work this Monday. One of these senators, John Fetterman, is a breath of fresh air on the political stage — an iconoclastic and unabashedly progressive Democrat who flipped a critical purple-state Senate seat in the last election; the other, Mitch McConnell, is a Republican dinosaur who happens to be their caucus leader but whose shameless party-before-country politics is otherwise unremarkable on the GOP side of the aisle.

Yet Daily Kos, the premiere Democratic website, highlighted the Republican’s return. This was the story’s headline:

GOP leader McConnell returning to Senate after head injury

In the tenth paragraph, the article Daily Kos posted does switch gears to mention that John Fetterman is ”[a]lso returning to the Senate on Monday”; it notes the praise he received for his openness about his treatment for depression, and it notes his auditory problems resulting from his stroke last year. Then the story returns to its main subject, mentioning another fall McConnell suffered a few years ago and that he had polio as a child.

It’s disappointing that Daily Kos’s front page highlighted McConnell’s return and gave short shrift to Fetterman’s. It’s also disappointing that the AP article uses scare quotes when referring to Fetterman’s recovery:

He was treated for six weeks at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, and his doctors say his depression is now “in remission.”

We can compare that to this excerpt from the top of today’s Philadelphia Inquirer article about Fetterman, which uses the same common medical term without the scare quotes:

“It’s so wonderful to actually be enjoying your job, because it really wasn’t any of that during my time when I started here,” Fetterman told The Inquirer in his first interview since resuming work in the Senate. As Fetterman readjusts to the daily life of a senator, he is also rounding out a year of intense highs and lows — a stroke that nearly killed him last May, winning a brutal campaign for a coveted Senate seat in November, and a public battle with severe depression. He returns to Capitol Hill, his depression in remission, eager to highlight Democratic priorities, as well as the importance of mental health care. And he and his staff are determining his legislative priorities, shaped by his health challenges, and how to assist him with his lingering auditory processing challenges (lots of iPads with transcription services). Less than a week in, Fetterman said he’s prepared to serve his full term. “Oh my gosh, of course I have six years ... absolutely,” he said. “I want to be, to serve Pennsylvania, and I’m honored by the trust that they vested in me. ... I want to work to honor their trust.”

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/4/20/2164925/-On-Monday-Fetterman-returned-to-work-So-Daily-Kos-posted-an-AP-article-about-McConnell-returning

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