Fixed That For You.

Hello. Very short Gene Pool today. It is brought to you by The Washington Pist.

In black, above, is a headline that appears on page one in The Washington Post paper edition today. A very similar headline appears online.

In red, above, is the headline as “corrected” for the Gene Pool by Pat Myers. Pat, as you know, was a longtime copy desk chief at The Post, and remains, to my knowledge and belief, the finest and funniest copy editor in America.

When Pat sent this to me, she wrote: “In my personal life, I make an effort to frame sentences in a positive way. But I don’t recommend it when it hides the news in a headline.”

Indeed.

Here is what the actual text of the story says, under that pablum headline:

The U.S. Coast Guard has allowed a new workplace harassment policy to take effect that downgrades the definition of swastikas and nooses from overt hate symbols to “potentially divisive” despite an uproar over the new language that forced the service’s top officer to direct that both would remain prohibited.

The new policy went into effect Monday, according to written correspondence that the Coast Guard provided to Congress this week, a copy of which was reviewed by The Washington Post. The manual is posted online and makes clear that its previous version “is cancelled.”

The Post last month was first to report on the Coast Guard’s plan to revise its workplace harassment policy. The Trump administration called the article “false,” but within hours of its publication Nov. 20 the service’s acting commandant, Adm. Kevin Lunday, issued a memo forcefully denouncing symbols such as swastikas and nooses, and directing that both remain prohibited. Lunday said at the time that his directive would supersede any other policy language.

It’s unclear why the new policy was not revised to align with Lunday’s guidance before the new manual went into effect.

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So, yeah. The headline The Post chose to run was a variant of “burying the lede,” an expression journos use to criticize a story that misses the big point or hides it under inches of pap. In this case, the error wasn’t just interment — it also involved perfuming the body.

It’s hard to understand why this happened, but it seems a good metaphor to describe an ongoing dichotomy at The Post. The Washington Post journalists — the rank and file, the writers and editors and visual people — are still, by and large, doing good work — work done without fear or favor, and that demands accountability from government and business. It is when the ham-handed, ethically compromised boss-level culture kicks in that embarrassing things happen. You sometimes see it in editorials. You sometimes see it in the nature of stories assigned or the nature of stories that are spiked. You sometimes see it in daintily softened headlines, which is a cowardly form of eggshell-walking.

I do not know for sure how this headline happened. I do know it is very not good.

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Today’s Gene Pool Gene Poll:

Good. You are all dismissed for the day.