Best bad headline from the Hegsethathon.

The award goes to The New Republic: "Hegseth Summoned Military Leaders to Say 'FAFO' in Disturbing Speech."

I think it's ludicrous for a journalistic article to call it a "disturbing speech."  Who is disturbed? The headline writer? Were the military leaders disturbed? All of them? Some of them? Don't create fake objectivity. Someone needs to have been disturbed. I want to know who and why.

From the article:

“To our enemies: FAFO,” Hegseth said, using an acronym that translates to “Fuck around and find out.”

Hegseth ordered hundreds of U.S. military officials around the globe to meet him at a spontaneous assembly in Virginia.... The message shocked members of the U.S. military, who could not recall another instance in which a defense secretary summoned so many commanders for a sudden in-person meeting—especially without a clear rationale.

Was it a "disturbing speech" because of what Hegseth said or was a "disturbing speech" because it was disturbing to have to travel and sit in the audience to hear?

As it turns out, the rationale was to rail against the culture wars. Hegseth, pacing back and forth onstage, also leveraged his time in front of America’s military to criticize “woke” ideology. He ordered the armed forces to reset its combat requirements to the “highest male standard only,” a decision that would effectively force women out of the military.

“If women can make it, excellent. If not, it is what it is,” Hegseth said.

It "would effectively force women out of the military" because we know women can't meet the standard that has been required for men? Quite aside from the probably unintended concession that this means biological men don't belong in women's sports, you're not "out of the military" just because you don't meet "combat requirements." At worst, you're just back to where you were before women were allowed into combat. That is, back to 2013.

Another thing that's wrong with that New Republic headline is ambiguity. "Hegseth Summoned Military Leaders to Say 'FAFO'" sounds as though he got them to say FAFO, as if he called them all together to make them chant the sassy initialism. (Unless Hegseth pronounced "FAFO" as a single word, it's not an "acronym." It's an initialism. And that's something else wrong with the article.)

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My runner-up bad headline goes to The Hill for "Hegseth declares war on 'fat' generals, troops."

“Frankly, it’s tiring to look out at combat formations, or really any formation, and see fat troops,” he said. “Likewise, it’s completely unacceptable to see fat generals and admirals in the halls of the Pentagon leading commands around the country and the world.”

“It’s a bad look. It is bad, and it’s not who we are,” he continued.

Another runner up, from The Washington Post: "Trump tells a roomful of silent generals to join a ‘war from within’/The president delivered an unusually meandering speech to an unprecedented gathering of the nation’s top military leaders" (gift link).

Do generals normally burst into spontaneous applause when listening to the Commander in Chief? I think not.

The article is full of references to their silence, but at least someone saw fit to insert this: "The military follows strict customs and courtesies, which include showing deference and respect to the commander in chief and refraining from showing approval or disapproval of political statements."

And: "I was told that, 'Sir, you won’t hear a murmur in the room,' Trump continued. 'I said we had to loosen these guys up a little bit.'"

So: never mind.

And I've got to question "an unusually meandering speech." Really? Unusually? Meandering is Trump's style. He calls it "the weave." Has someone at WaPo actually measured the comparative tightness of the various weaves?

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Now, I'm done with my harangue. The journalists need to get in shape. Frankly, I'm getting tired of looking at their writing and seeing such shit. It’s completely unacceptable.