It’s only straight talk when the press doesn’t do it Sen. John McCain dubbed his campaign bus the “Straight Talk Express” during his 2000 presidential run. Voters claim to prefer straight talk to mealy-mouthed answers from their politicians. Donald Trump, the MAGA cult claims, “tells it like it is.” “He’s outspoken. Other candidates wouldn’t tell you how it is, but he does.” – Betty Tully, August 2015 But straight talk is in the eye of the beholder. Straight talk from popular Fox News celebrities consists of xenophobia, homophobia, transphobia, and branding anyone to the left of Germany’s WWII dictator as hating America. Shy about being branded the enemy of the people, the straight press often shuns straight talk. Maybe that’s one of the many reasons the news business is in such a slump. The press danced around calling Trump’s lies lies for years. When finally they began, of course, and whenever he didn’t like his coverage, Trump declared them the enemy of the people and invited his cult to hurl invective at reporters. Voters are fickle about what they consider straight talk. Dan Froomkin (Press Watch) has called out New York Times headline writers for months for substituting dainty euphemisms for straight talk: “The New York Times cannot bring itself to definitively state anything negative about powerful people in a headline.” Euphemisms are obfuscatory, like the Nixon administration using “counter-insurgency strikes” in place of straight talk. (They were carpet-bombing Cambodia.) In this news environment, extremists and crooks become “firebrands” and…