[taneq]

I think you mean "Why the hell do Americans frown on passive voice?" ;)

I blame the early MS Word grammar checker which always called out passive voice as poor style. :P I'd imagine it was written that way because passive voice was easy to detect, and corporate power posturing tended to paint passive voice as 'weak'.

That said, passive voice is also associated with weasel wording and evasiveness, so if you're trying to communicate clearly and directly, it might not be the best way to phrase things.