I understand that people who write news headlines face a challenge. The headline should be compact, gripping, and easy to understand. So it’s natural that editors would prefer active, monosyllabic verbs. But this leads to an inequity of sorts. I see a ton of headlines of the form:
X rips Y!
X slams Y!
X blasts Y!
Typically, X is a loud, obnoxious individual who has done nothing more than go on Twitter and post a derogatory and unfounded comment about Y. In other words, X hasn’t really done anything aside from spouting off. And yet, for not doing anything particularly hard, X gets the benefit of having their actions described with some of the most powerful verbs in the English language.
To rip, slam, or blast something suggests an act of great force and great consequence. One assumes that that the person doing the ripping, slamming, or blasting possesses great energy and is motivated by great conviction to use that energy in service of a cause. Superheroes blast things.
If all you’ve done is type some nasty, possibly misspelled, and probably false words about someone you don’t like, you’re not a superhero, and your actions don’t merit the powerful descriptors we attach to the heroic. You haven’t done anything to deserve the strength of a word like “blast.”
Journalists, if you must report on the fact that X wrote something nasty about Y on Twitter, how about not saying “X slams Y?” Instead just say what happened:
X tweets about Y
Or do you not want to do that because a matter-of-fact description would reveal there’s no story here? ■