Jedi Logic

This morning I was re-reading parts of Donald Davie's "Articulate Energy" on syntax in poetry.

I couldn't help but remember what I had heard on hulu.com as an advert during an episode of "The Daily Show".
Toyota was telling us that they are building cars for us LIKE they always have.  Wrong.  Bad idea.  Don't even start to make a comparison.  Perhaps the writer's thought was to plant the idea of preference, as in, "we do like Toyotas". Why are they not trying to tell us that they will be building cars for us just AS they have always intended and just AS they have so often done in the past?

In conversational English, a medical researcher in a CNN interview says that the treatment results in LESS visits to the emergency room.  He did not say FEWER nor did he mean "FEWER expensive visits."  But he is merely speaking, even if he is speaking as a medical expert.

Now a news report on healthcare legislation before the US House: the journalist tells us that the Democrats have been told "to try and secure passage" of a bill.  A reader conversant in German would not be surprised to write two infinitives - the double infinitive - as many textbooks have been written to try to teach you this curiosity.  We can avoid the construction with "in an effort to teach" or some such.  Maybe they were told to try to secure passage of the bill, but the report sounds like gossip fed to a reporter.

So how does "to try and secure" end up on the internet in a published CNN news report?  I have an idea: the likes of gmail and blog software miss this sort of error.  There is no editor reading the submission from the "contributor" - it simply passes muster as would most any comment from a reader which might be appended to the article.

At what point will internet news be reduced to the accumulating tweets of a Rick Sanchez?  I will try and tell you.  My blog entries are written spontaneously and with minimal edits and corrections - or they do not serve my various purposes.  I post them freely, less as I see fit and often as not as if in a fit.  Some are more fit than others.