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The Meaning of Headlines: 'molehill' - politics




The Washington Post published an article on August 31, 2015, with the headline: ‘Mt. McKinley becomes the newest conservative molehill.’ What does ‘molehill’ mean?

Mt. McKinley is a mountain in Alaska, America – the highest mountain in North America at 6,168 metres (20,237 feet). The Alaskans called it Denali for centuries, which means Great One. The mountain was named after William McKinley before he was the 25th President of the United Sates. McKinley didn't climb it or even visit it. During the week, President Barack Obama, the 44th President of the United States, changed the name of the mountain to its original name, Denali. So if McKinley is a mountain, what is a molehill?

Cambridge Advanced Learner’s Dictionary and Thesaurus defines ‘molehill’ as ‘a small pile of earth pushed up to the surface of the ground by the digging of a mole, a mammal that lives underground.’ If a person makes a mountain out of a molehill, it means that the person is exaggerating. Instead of a small mound, a person might exaggerate to make a situation seem bigger, or more important.

The article states ‘President Obama’s conservative critics have long said there is no depth to which he will not sink in his zeal to trash the Constitution. Now, apparently, they also think there is no height to which he will not climb in that same effort.’ Obama’s critics said he was ‘taking unconstitutional action, overstepping authority, engaging in a partisan stunt and, of course, exhibiting racial animus’ because McKinley was a white man and a Republican (Obama is a Democrat). Alaska, the state where the mountain is located, is governed by a Republican.The critics questioned the timing of the name change.

The article states that Obama was within his authority to make the name change. Anyway, the Republicans have wanted to make the name change ‘for decades’ states the article. The article concludes with ‘the mountain will be added to other molehills of Obama overreach: Obamacare, the stimulus  … The common objection to all of these is less about what was done than who did it.’

The interpretation of the article is something like: – this is no big deal, it is a mountain out of a molehill, it's just a molehill of an event, and shouldn't be exaggerated into a political campaign issue. In other words, Obama was exaggerating the event to score political points. Hence, the exaggeration should be cut down to a molehill.


Scorecard for The Washington Post is 80% because it is an interesting juxtaposition between a mountain (a real one and one political party’s public relations) and a molehill (a political opposition’s view because they would have changed the name eventually anyway). However, the word molehill was mentioned only once, in the second last sentence. If it were a mountain versus a molehill then the molehill could have received more status.
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