I knew from the headline that it was a Democratic politician arrested for rape

To appreciate how the headline gave me the information I needed, you have to be familiar with Sherlock Holme’s concept of “the dog that didn’t bark.”  In other words, sometimes the absence of evidence is all the evidence you need.  In this case, the AP headline was a lean, mean “Kings County Supervisor accused of rape.”

“Aha!” says I to myself.  Had it been a Republican, the headline would have read “Republican official accused of rape.”  The fact that the headline was silent about party affiliation is a dead giveaway as to party affiliation.

To test my theory, I read the article and, sure enough, there, right in the very last paragraph, it said “The Democrat was first elected to the Kings County Board of Supervisors in 2008 and serves as the board’s chairman.” (Emphasis mine.)

So, once again, the AP is trying to hide the obvious.  It’s efforts have become so predictable, however, that it gives its own game away.

By the way, by writing the above, I am not falling into the conspiracy theory trap.  That’s the one where the liberals describe the Tea Party as racist, despite the absence of any racist acts or rhetoric.  Their problem, though, is that they cannot point to a pattern of omission versus commission.  They can just assure you that total silence is proof.  With the AP, because we have a regularly occurring pattern — Republicans are identified by party, Democrats are not — we can reach logical conclusions based on the patterns’ iteration.

As it happens, I hope that the supervisor is not a rapist.  The sentence immediately preceding the one describing his party affiliation says that he was once a Marine.  Now, obviously, he didn’t learn enough in the Marines because he’s a Democrat but, assuming he served honorably, I don’t want to learn that he is indeed a rapist.