Why Kevin McCarthy's 'gaffe' enraged reporters

In 1984, the writer and editor Michael Kinsley defined a "gaffe" as "not when a politician lies, but when he tells the truth." Although there are many types of gaffes, this particular type has come to be known as a "Kinsley gaffe," and an essential element of it isn't just that the politician tells the truth, but that he acknowledges a truth everyone knows, but at least some people have been pretending is not in fact true. Most of the time, we find this particular kind of lying somewhere between...