Ballon Juice: Lexicon: Cavuto Mark: Noted for August 28, 2013

Balloon Juice: Lexicon (A-H): Cavuto Mark:

A question mark used to speculate on a false claim, thus allowing Fox News to run incendiary chyrons without needing any facts to support the claim. The use of punctuation to cover for what would otherwise be a baseless (and libellous) accusation: “Dick Cheney hunts black men” would be wrong. “Dick Cheney hunts black men?” is okay. Perhaps rhetorical, perhaps slanderous--we examine the controversy; you decide! Coined by Jon Stewart after Fox’s Neil Cavuto:

…Cavuto’s not saying these things. He’s just asking, like, ‘Is your mother a whore?’ What? I’m not saying she’s a whore. I’m just wondering out loud if she is a whore. All I’m saying is that reasonable people who have banged your mother for money can disagree.

See also, "Some people say…"