Today in verb voice: Flak is unfairly gotten

A lot of flak is gotten by the passive voice over its alleged role in manipulating or obscuring agency. Most of that concern is misplaced; for every "mistakes were made,"  you can find dozens of cases in which the passive voice appropriately fronts the object as the center of attention. Unless you need to specify the office that did the arresting, "Suspect arrested after holdup" will always be a better headline than "Police arrest suspect after holdup." 

The passive isn't inherently suspicious. Nothing was being covered up when Macduff explained the circumstances of his birth to Macbeth. News outlets understand this, even if they (like the pundits they employ) generally can't identify verb voice* at better than coin-toss levels. News tells stories, and the passive voice has been an excellent storytelling tool for decades:

WASHINGTON, Friday, April 14 -- 12:30 A.M.

The President was shot in a theatre tonight, and is, perhaps, mortally wounded. 

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Attribution and agency

The passive voice gets a lot of stick (often from people or agencies who have trouble telling passive from active at better than coin-toss consistency), but verb voice is only part of the fun when it comes to assigning responsibility and blame in headlines. The active voice is a clear choice here, because Greta's point is that the divider-in-chief just can't stop dividing:

The Obama administration did it again, went stupid, and went stupid for no reason.

It's not that Greta has a problem with women: "You all know some of my best friends are Negresses I'm a feminist -- love to see women acknowledged for the great things they contribute to our nation." The problem is that the usurper and his minions picked a fight, "a 100% completely unnecessary fight, by booting President Andrew Jackson from the $20 bill and replacing him with a woman." And it would have been so easy to fix:

Rather than dividing the country between those who happen to like the tradition of our currency and want President Andrew Jackson to stay put and those who want to put a woman on a bill, it's so easy to keep everyone happy. We could put a woman on a bill ... but give Tubman her own bill. Like a $25 bill. We could use a $25 bill! Put her picture on that and we could all celebrate. That's the smart and easy thing to do. ... But some people don't think and would rather gratuitously stir up conflict in the nation.

That's pretty much all active, because you need to remember who's to blame for all this. Much as with this headline from last week's Washington Times:

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When I use a word, Humpty Dumpty said ...

Strap on those tinfoil thinking caps, discourse analysis fans: Taking together the hed and deck at right (the offlede in today's Washington Times), what can you conclude about "Obama's claim"?

If you worked backward to some sort of negation of the main hed -- Obama's claim has been refuted, Qaida remains a threat (particularly through its franchises), therefore Obama claimed that Qaida does not remain a threat to the U.S. -- congratulations! You read a lot of headlines and are fluent in American English. That's what the story expects you to think, even if it's a tad bit less categorical:
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