Fresh Loaf

One of my favorite headline writing techniques is damning someone by pretending to defend or absolve them.

For example, take this headline from Saturday’s AJC:

I don’t know much about the case or the people involved.

All I know from this headline is that an adult woman involved in some sort of sex case is married to a teenager who’s sticking up for her. This doesn’t exactly leave me with a positive first impression of any of the people involved.

In this instance, the negative first impression was reinforced by AJC.com’s front page tease for the story, which said something like “My wife is not pedophile.”

When someone is quoted in a newspaper insisting on your behalf that you’re not a pedophile, that’s not a good thing.

Today’s New York Daily News web site features this terrific headline about New York’s newly sworn-in governor, David Paterson:

I’m sure everyone’s glad the governor did not use taxpayer money to pay for sex, or for hotel rooms inside which he had sex with someone who isn’t his wife.

I’m also pretty sure that Paterson’s admission of extra-marital affairs just hours after he took over the governorship from Gov. Eliot “Client 9″ Spitzer, is not going to win him any new admirers.

By far my favorite damned-by-defense headline in recent days is this one from The Huffington Post:

Really? Very interesting. Tell me, HuffPo, which other actors aren’t being charged with rape today?

I feel like this headline writer is disappointed Morales isn’t being charged.

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