Right Wing Hack Mark Steyn Lifts In Part From Linguist Geoff Pullum’s Post

by tristero

Thanks, PZ, for turning me on to this most amusing post.* To add to the amusement, Steyn had to resort to plagiariz…sorry, “borrowing,” merely to diss the style of author Dan Brown. Talk about being lazy! Pundit Steyn even paraphrased – and poorly – the famous title of the original source, “Renowned author Dan Brown staggered through his formulaic opening sentence.”

(Special note to less-than-quick-on-the-draw-but-who-think-they’re-really-geniuses- rightwing readers: No kidding? You noticed my own careless deployment of anarthrous occupational nominal premodifiers? Whoa, are you sharp!)

* And PZ, I loved reading about the evolution of whale morphology, too, and think I got the basic points, even if many of the details were beyond my immediate knowledge. But as it happens, I wrote the music for the whale evolution section of the PBS Evolution series, so some of the issues were familiar. Fascinating stuff.