Headlines: A manner of speaking

Headlines at the Fox News homepage are as much about talking as about doing: how you say things, and where you fit on Fox's villain-to-virtuous scale, are as important as the things you say and their outcome. Hence the preponderance of headlines in which people speak out, fire back, break their silence, or -- as in this case -- don't mince words.

It's not quite a classic clickbait,* in which some essential bit of information is suspended  until the audience follows the bait to the outlet's financial incentive: clicks on the link to see which pantry staple is meant by PANTRY STAPLE LINKED TO EXPLOSIVE DIARRHEA or stays tuned through the commercial after "Godzilla ravages northern suburbs. We'll tell you which ones after this." The headline isn't about which words Trump didn't mince; it's about affirming that he's not the kind of guy who would equivocate when Alarming Reports about Our Troops are in play.

All these forms entail a fact statement, but they leave a lot of room for context to fill in the blanks about it. "X has three-word response to Y" could be either "yeah, sounds great" or "go f*** yourself"; your relationship with Fox and the actors who populate its pages lets you make a fairly good guess just from the brevity of the response and the polarities of those involved. "Candidate breaks silence on X" entails a period of silence and a breaking of it, but there's no canonical measure of either. If the Free Beacon's story about the baby goat scandal is posted at 4 a.m. and you post about it upon awakening at 6:45, "Embattled Dem breaks silence on baby goat scandal" is a perfectly legitimate Fox headline. After all, you have those 165 minutes of silence to account for.

Not mincing words is more distinctly valenced. We don't really have a non-negated condition of mincing words, but if we did, the Fox version would look something like what happens when some goober on the House DEI subcommittee asks the poor witness "Professor, can you define  what a 'woman' is?"** On Planet Fox, nuance is for the weak; Real Men get straight to the point. 

So on the surface, there's nothing unusual about a headline like the one on Saturday morning's lead story: "Trump doesn't mince words when pressed on USS Abraham Lincoln's deployment after alarming reports." For the modal Fox reader, that's all ye know on earth and all ye need to know. And that's convenient, because (a) yes he did and (b) did you see what he said when he wasn't mincing words?

The top story here is the day's liveblog, so you'll need to scroll down a bit, but:

President Donald Trump said Friday that the USS Abraham Lincoln, an aircraft carrier that has been deployed for more than 260 days, has gone on*** “not nearly long enough.” 

Trump made the comment after a reporter started asking him Friday, “family members of U.S. service members are concerned about the conditions onboard the USS Lincoln.” 

“Well no that ship is moving -- no they're not,” Trump interjected. “That ship is moving right now, or very shortly, and it's being replaced with another very similar ship.” 

When asked if the deployment of the USS Abraham Lincoln has gone on too long, Trump said, “no, no, no, not nearly long enough.” 

Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell also blasted media coverage of the USS Abraham Lincoln on Friday, accusing outlets of twisting the hardships of an extended combat deployment into a “false narrative.”

Look past that gear-grinding cleft in the third graf (he's interrupting himself to say those pesky families ARE NOT complaining) for the hedge. We go from "that ship is moving" to "that ship is moving right now, or very shortly." The adverb overload is a tell; the only thing more Trumply would be if the Lincoln was "very powerfully replaced by a another very similar ship." He's mincing it fine enough to saute with the chicken tartare in the officers' mess.

What's more striking -- and the reason so many Fox headlines seem designed to keep you from reading the damn story -- is the phrase he doesn't mince. His answer to "have they been out there too long?" isn't "By golly, we'll get to the bottom of this!" It's literally "no, no, no" -- the ungrateful wretches ought to be out there longer! 

If you stop after the headline, in short, the world is safely spinning on its axis; Trump is in charge, and all's right with the world. Just don't make the mistake of looking under the hood.

* I think this one is sort of an unholy hybrid of clickbait and speech act, so if any of you language friends know how it's properly classified, please drop a line.
** Somebody who covers her drink when Pete Hegseth walks in. Thanks, I'll be here all week.
*** Wut?