Pullum @ Language Log has an item about Presidents and pronouns: "BBC Radio 4 had an upcoming-program announcement the other day that said Madeleine Albright would be on the program talking about "the situation that will face the next president of the United States when they take office just over a year from now."
Pullum puts it down to "the first moment in history when there is genuinely a non-trivial amount of doubt about whether the next president will be male or female," but that's far too mundane and explanation. My take is that Madeleine Albright is expecting the Clintons to be the next President. As are the Clintons.
Posted by Vanderleun at January 8, 2008 2:51 AM | TrackBackApparently Pullum doesn't keep up with his own blog (see this ) or he'd already be correcting Mad Halfbright's THEY with the more modern "...when YO take office..." or "...when SHORTY take office...".
Me, I don't see the problem. Given the current slate of contenders, the former SecState* could have just as easily said "...when IT takes office...".
*WTF was Bill thinking when he appointed this horror to our cabinet?
Posted by: mike anderson at January 8, 2008 5:24 AMMaybe we need to go ahead and adopt "yo" as the indefinite pronoun. I'd love to hear Madeleine say that.
"...when yo takes office next year."
Posted by: Brian at January 8, 2008 6:22 AM"It is impossible to speak in such a way that you cannot be misunderstood." -- Karl Popper N.B.: Comments are moderated to combat spam and may not appear immediately. Comments that exceed the obscenity or stupidity limits will be either edited or expunged.