Order

I work for a company that decides how to present information based on sources including The Associated Press. When you read about the Olympics, an election (from federal down to local), local or national happenings, or even something as seemingly fluffy as a dog show, you’re reading material that’s been assembled, formatted and presented using guidance from sources including the AP.

So in the wake of white supremacists storming the Capitol and doing this to it (photo by Leah Millis of Reuters):

The AP put out guidance on how to refer to the people who did that.

This benefits a great many people in at least two ways:

1. Among the biggest are that it limits sympathizers’ ability to downplay this violent white supremacist mob by suggesting that it simply be called a protest or even less:

“It was a bunch of pissed-off people that feel an election was stolen, somehow, some way.”

“It’s an inconvenience at this point, is all it is.”

The person who said that also, in typical fashion, blamed the media:

“It’s a whole side of the argument and, primarily, your profession is at the root of it,” Catanzara said, referring to news media, “basically championing Joe Biden the whole time.”

The AP, meanwhile, is suggesting that it be called a mob or a riot:

“Calling it a ‘mob’ or a ‘riot’ would also be appropriate, especially when the protesters’ actions were wild, widespread, violent and uncontrolled. The term ‘insurrection,‘ meaning the act of rising up against established authority, could also be justified.”

And yes, Catanzara is a sympathizer: “Catanzara said he himself ‘wouldn’t have partaken in‘ the Capitol assault but he kept defending those who did.”

So by giving editorial team members across the country specific instructions on how to refer to an angry mob that overwhelms a police force many outlets have reported being complicit, the AP is giving those people a way to factually counter pro-Trump sympathizers who want to semantically downplay a force that occupied the Capitol, stole property, broke property, etc.

2. By providing guidance, the AP allows editorial team members to say, “Okay, I have some control over this, and it’s a defined thing. I can start to move on with my life and maybe try to forget about everything for as long as I need to for my job.”

Because yeah, this was — is — a big story. But our lives are full of big stories. And small ones. And they all need attention.

And at a time when insurrectionists just stormed the Capitol, other stories can give us a place to hide from all the bad — particularly because we don’t have to worry about how to call a spade a spade without some sympathizer “actually”ing and insisting that we call a spade a “long-handled trowel” or some other nonsense. (Even as the insurrectionists were storming the Capitol, stealing federal property and posting pictures of themselves apparently breaking the law, the usual media suspects were insisting that this was actually the work of anti-fascists and Black Lives Matter.

The calming effect of that guidance is particularly heightened for me because I live an hour away from where insurrectionists stormed the Capitol. I’ve protested in D.C. more than once — including with my kids. So when someone storms the Capitol, that’s not some far-away thing I’m viewing. I can’t rest comfortably in the knowledge that there’s some menacing body of water or other significant geological feature they’d have to cross to get to me. I’m a Metro ride away.

So, a Metro ride away, I watched television. I cleaned my kids’ room. I ate. And when work time came, I saw that guidance, then dove into not-reading-about-insurrectionists work.

I got to escape the insurrectionist news for a day, which was nice. But the thing about the news is that when a big thing happens, every newsroom goes looking for a way to connect it to readers. That happens irrespective of whether the reader is in a broad field/place or a niche field/place. It results in headlines like:

“Wife of insurrectionist was mayor’s art teacher”

“Five reasons insurrection should concern subtropical botanists”

And so today, while I was doing my cybersecurity editing, my hide-in-work attempt finally ended, courtesy of three words:

“Wednesday’s violent protest”

I recognized the term from the AP guidance, but I wanted to make sure the editor was aware of it.

Meanwhile, I’d started shaking.

And I couldn’t focus on the work part of work.

I couldn’t get past the “Wednesday’s violent protest” and to the rest of the sentence, which I was being paid to ensure was perfect.

The moment I read “Wednesday’s violent protest,” the calm and refuge of everything got blown up by “Wednesday’s violent protest”ers.

Now, in addition to them taking Nancy Pelosi’s lectern and sitting in her office and taking mail that was meant to go from her office to another elected official, they’d taken my calm.

I couldn’t sit still — couldn’t sit at all. So I got up and comfort-ate a Klondike bar. (I’m a little more familiar with psychology than some other folks, which allows me to perform targeted self-care in a way that in at least one case has outright abused the self-care mechanism. What can I say? The pandemic has destroyed the calm and refuge in my life and replaced it with noise and children and masks. My only goal is to live. If I have to buy new pants in the process, so be it.)

I also got up so I could get away from my computer, which is — along with my brain — where that insurrection has lived. I haven’t gone into D.C., for obvious reasons, and I don’t anticipate doing so soon. (It’s cold, a new year doesn’t mean an end to the pandemic, insurrectionists are planning to return, I don’t like traveling, I’d have to put on pants — lots of reasons to stay tf away.)

So I walked from my computer to my chest freezer, which is beside my back door, which is transparent, allowing me to start eating a Klondike bar and look at all the leaves and fence sections and trees and other not-insurrectionists. A long few minutes later, I walked back to my desk. I wasn’t okay — I’m still not okay — but I wasn’t shaking anymore.

I ensured that the sentence in question was sound, that the whole paragraph of news was fine, and that the entire newsletter was fine. And now it’s gone, sent to however many subscribers, each of whose calm — if they had any in the first place — will now be disrupted by those insurrectionists.

I still have a few Klondike bars left for them. But if they’re like me, they don’t want to have to go outside and risk some deranged white guy finding them and insurrecting them.

They want order too, even if it’s as fake as mine.