Jason

Sometimes, news headlines are emotionally charged to the point of being aggressive. Maybe editors think anger is what the public wants nowadays. Or maybe after the Wall Street bailouts, the BP oil spill, and a long, painful recession, headlines are just reflecting a common desire to give someone, anyone, their comeuppance.

Regardless, it gets over the top sometimes. All of these headlines are from The Washington Post’s web site today.

Haynesworth learns who is boss
It’s hard to insert a smackdown into a headline, but this editor pulled it off. To be fair, it’s an opinion column about a prima donna Redskins player, but still, Haynesworth is a 350 lb. Man. He’s such a man that my word processor automatically capitalized “man” when I wrote it. You shouldn’t gloat at someone with an arm the size of your torso unless you want the next headline to be “Sports columnist learns who is boss after Haynesworth sits on him”.

Iran starts feeling heat
Ooh…sounds like Iran is about to get some comeuppance! It also sounds like wishful thinking—Iran has been hit with sanctions, embargoes, and toothless U.N. resolutions ever since the Western-backed Shaw was overthrown in [1978]. Maybe the editor was lazy and was just recycling a headline from 1986.

Then there’s the “Weather Gang” section of the Post.

PM Update: Some payback for all the heat

Seriously? Have we declared a War on Weather now?
WEATHER FORECASTER (draws gun): “I’ve had it up to here with you, heat! [BLAM BLAM BLAM] Oh yeah! Who’s sweating now, [description of heat]?”

Even the chat promos are getting into the game.

Carolyn Hax Live: Advice columnist tackles your problems
Go Carolyn! Grab our problems by the ankle, drive them to the ground, and then punch them in the face until they promise never to bother us again.

Where are our problems going that they need to be tackled? Are they running towards the endzone to spike another painful thought into our egos? I don’t need my problems to be tackled. I’d be perfectly content leading them to a plate of cookies under a box propped up with a stick. Trapping my problems and never having to look at them seems like a perfectly acceptable solution.

My main concern is that if emotion met rationality in a cage match, emotion would whack rationality with a folding chair every time. It’s inherently stronger than rational thought, which evolved much later than our emotional centers.

That’s why it’s easier to manipulate people when they are emotional. (see: Glenn Beck and Keith Olbermann) and why news organizations should be careful when they use emotionally-laden words. They make articles more interesting and can help us care about things we might not care about otherwise. But they can also obscure truth and prompt us to form opinions based on emotion rather than the more laborious path of reason and logic.