The bad glib writing of blase assumptions
A tip of the hat to Timothy Noah at Slate for catching this very bad writing at the New York Times. I don’t think the Times is the be-all and end-all; I also don’t think any writer is immune from this sort of glib error. But it’s important to put people on notice; we all write to be read (or seen), and if we don’t expect criticism we don’t deserve accolades, and we shouldn’t be writing. Assumptions need to be grounded, and as Noah points out, the comparison here in no way holds up.