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Comment by bt1a | Hacker News Reader

Spent a few minutes trying to decipher why Bloomberg would go through such hoops to silence his own wife.

We've changed the title above to that of the HTML doc, which fits the 80 char limit.

(Submitted title was "Bloomberg Killed Investigation, Fired Reporter Then Tried to Silence His Wife", which I'm sure was cut to that to try to fit the limit.)

This issue comes up a lot. As a sibling comment says, if it is so common an occurrence for the character limit to lead to misleading headlines because they were overly condensed, you may want to consider slightly expanding the headline length limit (perhaps to 120-140). But I appreciate that it's a balancing act, because making it too long dilutes the punchiness of the HN front page itself. No easy answer here.

It comes up somewhat regularly but it's quite rare for there to be a case where there isn't a natural solution. For example in this case the HTML doc title not only fit the limit nicely, but was more neutral and thus better for HN. I think HN benefits from this limit.

Please consider extending the limit to 120 or 140 characters. 80 often forces me to produce a misleading condensation in my submissions.

In the alternative, add a "privileged comment" pinned to the top of the page which cannot be replied to, where an extended summary of the submission can be added by the submitter. But just changing the character limit of the title is probably a lot easier.

Her name is Ms. Placedmodifier

I believe this is what’s called a “Garden Path” sentence, because it leads you to the wrong conclusion initially.

Originally thought it was an investigation about a killing, made the second half of the title all the more sinister.

Nixon's Attorney General, the horrible, horrible man, John Mitchell, had his wife silenced by drugging and sequestering her.

"If you guys could get John Mitchell, that would be beautiful." (Quote from All the President's Men)

There's an interesting 1994 BBC documentary, "The Watergate Affair" that talks about it. Mitchell was one of the few players in that sordid saga that didn't speak on camera. They're such a bunch of smug bastards, the lot of them, except for John Dean; he's only half an ass.

But, yeah, what was the elephant doing in your pajamas?

That agents of President Nixon kidnapped and beat the wife of one of his cronies to silence her seems unbelievable, but it's true. E.g.,

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martha_Mitchell#June_1972_kidn...

This was also covered in season 1 of the Slow Burn podcast, which was excellent.

Nixon personally blamed Martha Mitchell for the scandal and impeachment.

The same guy who told Frost, "Well, if the President did it, it's not illegal."

Clearly, his grip on reality was a long time gone in service to his power-seeking for his constituency.

Even a president can be a data point in Dunning & Kruger's "too stupid to know how stupid they are" category.

Now, we have a mobbed-up slumlord 1000x more stupid and infinitely more amoral. He is a true credit to the GOP's fundamental guiding principles.

It’s interesting to think what Nixon could’ve been if he wasn’t so paranoid and vindictive. Arguably the shenanigans in Watergate weren’t even necessary to secure a victory.

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