Thread by @Usherwood

Let's talk about dead cats, since you're going to be seeing a lot of them in the coming weeks

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(NB I'm sticking with mummified ones, because even I baulked at what came up on Google Images for 'dead cat', but go knock yourself out if you like)

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In this context, a dead cat is a shock story to distract from another, potentially more damaging story

You purposely whip up outrage to drown out the other stuff

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This morning brings an example of this

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https://twitter.com/anandMenon1/status/1191972456082366464?s=20

Johnson pens a piece to launch his campaign, compares Corbyn to Stalin and the kulaks (summary here: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dekulakiz…) and changes the debate

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Listen to the headlines from R4 last night at 2200 to get a sense of what that debate looked like then

bbc.co.uk/programmes/m00…

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Yes, not many people in the UK know about the kulaks, but enough commentators do to pick up the analogy. And everyone knows Stalin was a Very Bad Man

But accuracy isn't the point: distraction is

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When my kids were younger, I used to be able to distract them by pointing in some random direction and going "oooh, a distraction"

They're older now and wise to this

But it's a similar strategy, albeit drawing in attention, rather than pushing it away

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It's not intrinsically illegitimate to try to change the debate - it happens all the time - but we (as citizens) have to be aware of what it implies

Just because X is important, doesn't mean Y or Z stop being important

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In sum:
- when a new thing comes up, check what's being pushed aside
- judge an issue's importance against objective benchmarks, not just participants' evaluations
- never google 'dead cat'

/end

A couple of notes:
- today's not the best example of a dead cat, just the most immediate one
- the more you use this, the less it works