{"id":881,"date":"2004-05-01T17:34:00","date_gmt":"2004-05-01T17:34:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/?p=881"},"modified":"2017-12-14T13:31:42","modified_gmt":"2017-12-14T19:31:42","slug":"881","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/2004\/05\/01\/881\/","title":{"rendered":"Passive Voice as An Art Form"},"content":{"rendered":"

The front page of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch<\/i> which arrived on my driveway:<\/p>\n

\"Post-Dispatch<\/p>\n

Man, you have to love the artistry in the headline JOBLESS FATHER IS KILLED AFTER BANK IS ROBBED<\/b>. When an armed robber menaces bank tellers and guards with a shotgun and then points it at responding police officers, it’s important to remove all assignment of blame from the robber and build a morally neutral headline. If anyone is to blame, it’s obviously George W. Bush, whose faltering economy and job destruction has led honorable fathers to desperate acts. I guess the editor who concocted this headline was being even handed in not blaring POLICE GUN DOWN JOBLESS FATHER AFTER BANK IS ROBBED<\/b>.<\/p>\n

That, friends, is a work of art in passive voice.<\/p>\n

I notice that the online recreation of the front page<\/a> looks different:<\/p>\n

\"Post-Dispatch<\/p>\n

JOBLESS FATHER IS KILLED AFTER ROBBING BANK<\/b> still runs a little sympathetic for the bank robber. The headline for the online story isn’t much better: Robber is killed outside bank, police say<\/a><\/b>, which uses the “authority figures allege” asterisk to show that the crusading headline writers at the Post-Dispatch<\/i> won’t be duped into thinking that a man with a shotgun and a bagful of money coming out of a bank is anything but a victim of oppression by a heartless police force\/society\/something other than his own bad choices.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The front page of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch which arrived on my driveway: Man, you have to love the artistry in the headline JOBLESS FATHER IS KILLED AFTER BANK IS ROBBED. When an armed robber menaces bank tellers and guards with a shotgun and then points it at responding police officers, it’s important to remove […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3334,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-881","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","category-st-louis-post-dispatch"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/881","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3334"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=881"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/881\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18546,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/881\/revisions\/18546"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=881"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=881"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brianjnoggle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=881"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}