Monday, December 19, 2016

Not from The Onion


[The New York Times, December 19, 2016.]

I suppose that a genuine Onion headline would have Stallone agreeing to chair the National Endowment for the Arts.

In other news, the Times introduced an error in subject-verb agreement in reporting this story:

[Trump] later said that an education in critical thinking, reading, writing and math are “the keys to economic success,” but he added that “a holistic education that includes literature and the arts is just as critical to creating good citizens.”
In the Washington Post article that the Times is quoting, Trump (or whoever wrote his responses) got the subject and verb right:
Critical thinking skills, the ability to read, write and do basic math are still the keys to economic success.
It’s possible to read the Times sentence as making “an education in critical thinking” the first item in a series, followed by “reading, writing and math,” but I think that’s a stretch. “An education in [four things]” is the sensible way to read the sentence.

Back in our lead story: the Times also reports that Stallone thinks “he would be more effective in helping military veterans.”

comments: 3

Fresca said...

Stallone would be so much better with arts than with veterans--he never even served in the military, but he did make one really good movie (Rocky).

Pete said...

"Holistic" is the tipoff - there's no way he wrote that himself.

Michael Leddy said...

Fresca, I would guess that he’s one of a number of people who have opted out.

Pete, I agree. It’s tricky business — so much of what we credit to a given politician is of course a matter of other people’s words.