I call it the 'wince factor.'
I use it all the time, usually regarding headlines, especially the headlines that adorn our front page. It's still the most important decision I make each day.
I can always tell when I've pushed that imaginary line we dance around every day - you know, the one labeled 'you've gone too far' - when I show someone a prospective headline and they wince just a bit.
It's a telltale sign that if the people around here - for the most part a fairly hard-edged crowd - it's pretty likely that the headline won't fly with the public.
I often change courses.
I don't know if Pamela Karlan employs a 'wince factor.' I wish she had.
Who is Pamela Karlan? Obviously you were not tuned into to yesterday impeachment hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee in Washington. Karlan is a Stanford University law professor. She is one of three law profs who the Democrats trotted out to establish their belief that the president did indeed commit 'high crimes and misdemeanors," the threshold set by the founding fathers in the Constitution for impeachment of a sitting president.
Each made their case.
But in doing so, Karlan added a comment that clearly strayed beyond the 'wince factor.'
She was trying to make a comparison that the president might consider himself royalty, and in doing so she made a wordplay off the name of the president's 13-year-old son.
Yeah, I winced, too.
I'm guessing every Democrat on that panel winced as well.
Of course Republicans pounced on the comment as a sign of Karlan having a bias against the president.
To her credit, the professor later in the day apologized for the comment.
Good for her.
I don't think anyone is ever going to accuse me of being in Donald Trump's camp. But wrong is wrong. And what Pamela Karlan did yesterday at that hearing was wrong.
I don't know if she had the opportunity to show anyone her prepared comments before her testimony yesterday, or if they were even in those prepared remarks or merely an off-the-cuff comment.
I wish she had. I think if she had the opportunity to see so many people wince, she might have thought better of making that comparison in the first place.
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