I love language and so I was grieved to find the following in today's New York TImes column by Maureen Dowd on Hilary Clinton and Sarah Paling: critics were wrong who said that Hilary Clinton "had been disappeared" by Obama and Sarah Palin is on the wrong track if she wants to become one of "women who want to progress this country." Granted, the second was a quote from Sarah Palin, but to repeat "want to progress" twice in the column, was to my mind not progress.
In the first instance, Dowd is countering critics who claimed that Hilary Clinton had been subsumed or overshadowed by Obama. So why not say that? Why say "had been disappeared," as if Hilary were the star of some bad spy flick? As for Palin, and wanting "to progress" the country, why not "progress it" by using proper English? To paraphrase a *slightly* well-known writer, the quality of good English is not strained. Why not discuss women who want "to make progress?"
I know, I know, to stay alive language has to change and evolve. Or does it? What was so bad about Elizabethan English?
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