Is this what Fox News “journalists” do all day long? Check Michelle Obama‘s grammar? Laura Ingraham, perhaps one of the nastiest of the Fox News crew, loves to troll her days away on Twitter, finding anything she can use to attack President Obama. And, apparently, it’s “bad grammar” to use the word “their” — which is plural — when referring to a singular noun, like “parent.” Never mind that (a) it’s Twitter, so character constraints apply, and (b) like it or not, almost everyone uses the word “their” to denote “he or she” because “he or she” is awkward, and the English language, unlike other languages, does not have a word for “he or she.”
But to see how Laura Ingraham uses the word “their” in a sentence, let’s visit a piece she wrote last year:
In their mission to erase all vestiges of masculinity once and for all, the fashion mavens have done away with the backpack, the briefcase, and the gym bag. The only accessory acceptable to the chic man about town is the murse. This purse-like man-pouch is all the rage in most metropolitan areas. At first, they weren’t as objectionable because they were modeled on satchels you’d expect to see on a World War I infantryman. But over the last few years, they have gotten more and more . . . well, feminine. The leather, canvas, and Naugahyde man-bags are now indistinguishable from their female counterparts.
Why does a man even need a purse? A man should carry around exactly two items: a wallet and a phone. If you routinely tote anything more than that, you just might be a woman.
Last month, Ingraham, who is also a conservative radio commentator, made a seemingly transphobic attack on love and marriage, via Twitter.
Apparently, the only thing Michelle Obama does wrong is mix up her pronouns. That’s all Fox News has on her.
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{ 1 comment }
Grammatically, the first "their" is correct (referring to mavens, plural), the use of the second "their" is incorrect and should be instead, "its" as the man-bag is not a person and thus cannot have personification. Perhaps you should emphasize the latter to draw attention to where her grammatical error lies.
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