Doesn't AI stop you from making basic grammar errors like "grabbing he and his wife in their pajamas"?

CBS Evening News in its supposedly new, better form:

Here is the soft launch of the @CBSEveningNews with @TonyDokoupil, not official until Monday, but kicking off two days early in light of the U.S. military strikes in Venezuela and capture of Nicolas Maduro pic.twitter.com/gFlviKfkqh

— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) January 3, 2026

Give I a break!

You seem to think you can amuse us by painting a picture of a man and his wife caught in their pajamas, but I'm not amused. Their capture is serious matter, not a prank. It wasn't about humiliating them. And you humiliate yourself with that glaring, grating grammar mistake.

Get proper editing. How is this mainstream, professional journalism? I'd be embarrassed, on my little 1-person blog, to have written something as bad as "grabbing he and his wife in their pajamas." 

"Why everything is ‘aesthetic’ to Gen Z and Alpha/'Aesthetic' is now an adjective and a one-word compliment. Why does it still sound wrong to older ears?"

That headline at the Washington Post sent me right to the OED to see when "aesthetic" first became an adjective. 

The relevant meaning is "Of a thing: in accordance with principles of artistic beauty or taste; giving or designed to give pleasure through beauty; of pleasing appearance." The OED traces that back to the 1800s:

"What did you think of that Supreme Court oral argument?"/"I'm enjoying learning about the parts of speech."

That's a snippet of phone conversation between Meade and me — my question, his answer — as we'd been listening separately, through headphones, as we were walking toward our meeting spot in the lakeshore woods. 

From the concordance to the transcript of the argument in Learning Center v. Trump:

noun [5] 16:19 52:3,25 53:

20 85:22 ...

verb [9] 11:25 16:10 40:8 

52:3,11 53:20 100:13 135:

4 176:21

verbs [29]11:25 12:2,7 16:

19 28:16 29:3,16,22 30:2

Context: 

GENERAL SAUER: Dames & Moore... said, this particular provision, where Congress has given these broad verbs, I mean, "regulate" is a capacious verb, admittedly, so are "nullify," so are "void," so are, frankly, all the other verbs there in the -- the language in IEEPA. 

"If the White House must be remade, let there be a plan; let it be debated; let the financing be transparent and free of kickbacks and corruption."

"It isn’t complicated, and it’s the very principle at the heart of the American Revolution: following rules is not weakness.... Architecture embodies values; it is not merely a receptacle of them. Simple proportions and human-scale spaces don’t just suggest the spirit of a democratic nation. They are that spirit in three dimensions, with doors and windows. Reverence for the past, and reluctance to destroy until the risks of destruction are fully known, is not timidity but wisdom, in architecture as in life. To conserve, after all, is the essence of conservatism. The shock that images of the destruction provoke—the grief so many have felt—is not an overreaction to the loss of a beloved building. It is a recognition of something deeper: the central values of democracy being demolished before our eyes. Now we do not only sense it. We see it."

Writes Adam Gopnik, at the end of his New Yorker essay, "Why Trump Tore Down the East Wing/The act of destruction is precisely the point: a kind of performance piece meant to display Trump’s arbitrary power over the Presidency, including its physical seat."

Reverence for the past and reluctance to destroy until the risks of destruction are fully known — but is that your general principle? If it is, you are a committed conservative. 

***

As long as we're talking about rules... the traditional rules of punctuation would reject those those commas after "the past" and "fully known." It's easy to see if you put it this way: Reverence and reluctance is not timidity. Not: Reverence, and reluctance, is not timidity. And, obviously, "is" is wrong! I suspect that at one point the sentence was "Reverence for the past — along with reluctance to destroy until the risks of destruction are fully known — is not timidity but wisdom, in architecture as in life." 

Punctuation and grammar embody values; they are not merely a receptacle of them. I remember when the great tradition of The New Yorker was scrupulously tending to these matters. Is my grief an overreaction to the loss of a beloved publishing tradition?

"L.A. is ours, this is our city. This is what my morning walk turned into. They’re terrorizing our neighborhood."

Said Mikema Nahmir, who "said he was out for his morning walk at 11 a.m. when he saw two women running down the street yelling that 'la migra' was at MacArthur Park" and who "joined the group of protesters who chased and yelled after the military-style trucks."

Nahmir is quoted in "Heavily armed immigration agents descend on L.A.’s MacArthur Park" (L.A. Times)("Immigration agents in military green surrounded MacArthur Park as the convoy readied for a show of force akin to a Hollywood movie. They came with horses and armored vehicles, carrying rifles and in tactical gear in the middle of what is the heart of immigrant Los Angeles").

The phrase "carrying rifles and in tactical gear..." should be relocated next to the word "They" so that grammar mavens do not get distracted into efforts to craft a Grouchoesque how-he-got-in-my-pajamas joke out of the image of horses (and armored vehicles) carrying rifles and tactical gear. This is not an occasion for cheap linguistic jokes. There was a military show of power in MacArthur Park... like a striped pair of pants.

"We urge that the resolution of the Iranian crisis leads to a broader de-escalation of hostilities in the Middle East, including a ceasefire in Gaza."

 That's the official statement, quoted in "Trump leaves G-7 meeting early to deal with Mideast; signs group statement/Trump signed the G-7’s statement backing Israel and criticizing Iran after discussions with other leaders and changes to the initial draft, a U.S. official said" (WaPo).

There's something off about that sentence, and I don't think it's just that "leads" should be "lead." (Subjunctive, right?) I think "urge" seems wrong. 

Who is being urged? Isn't the right word "hope"? We hope that the resolution of the Iranian crisis leads to a broader de-escalation of hostilities in the Middle East.... But to hope in this situation is too passive, and yet, what is going on here except passivity?

And what disturbs me most is that it seems as though they want to urge that there be a "de-escalation," but they are not urging the belligerents to de-escalate now. There's a precondition, "the resolution of the Iranian crisis." So it seems that they are urging that the crisis be resolved, and then hoping that when — if? — that happens, hostilities will de-escalate. That makes the most sense, but it says nothing about what the "resolution" is. The Iran crisis could be resolved through a complete military victory for Israel.

Finally, what is a "broader de-escalation of hostilities"? Hostilities have been escalating. The de-escalation has yet to begin. It's nonsense to speak of something that doesn't exist getting broader. And escalation and de-escalation are metaphors of height, not breadth. Pick one. "Broader de-escalation" also absurdly asks simultaneously for more and for less: We want wider shortness.

This sentence feels as though it began with many different words that have been swapped out for awkward substitutions. We're told Trump wouldn't sign the original draft. I'll bet that was better written, but the edited version we see won Trump's signature. Perhaps he wanted it to say nothing specifically discernible (other than "including a ceasefire in Gaza"). And perhaps he wanted to endorse military victory for Israel — AKA "the resolution of the Iranian crisis" — and didn't want or need to say it outright. He did get the others to sign onto that. 

"Thomas Crooks was acting strangely. Sometimes he danced around his bedroom late into the night. Other times, he talked to himself with his hands waving around."

So begins the NYT article, "The Quiet Unraveling of the Man Who Almost Killed Trump/Thomas Crooks was a nerdy engineering student on the dean’s list. He stockpiled explosive materials for months before his attack on Donald Trump, as his mental health eroded."

Sidenote: The NYT is writing "acting strangely" again. We just talked about this grammar error 2 days ago, here. The NYT had "acting strangely" in a headline 2 days ago — "People Around President Trump Are Acting Very Strangely." Please, editors, learn about copulative verbs (AKA linking verbs). You should be writing "acting strange" (for the same reason you'd write "The sky looks blue" and not "The sky looks bluely").

Now, what can we learn about Thomas Crooks? Let's see...

"Copulative sounds more exciting! (Don't say 'copulative sounds more excitingly.')"

Said I, in a discussion of copulative verbs inspired by the NYT headline "People Around President Trump Are Acting Very Strangely."

Read the full discussion, at Grok.

"Meghan Markle Wears Ginormous, Cozy Button-Down While Flower Arranging With Dog Guy."

That's the headline of the morning for me — over at InStyle.

Don't get me started on the present-day inanity of calling a shirt a "button-down" — in my day, a "button-down" was a shirt with a button-down collar, not a shirt that you button up (up, not down) — because I've already spent an hour down a rathole with Grok, exploring the origins of that usage — is it a retronym necessitated by the prevalence of T-shirts? — and wondering the how kids these days could understand the meaning of the album title "The Button-Down Mind of Bob Newhart." And that veered off into a discussion of the comic genius of Lucille Ball in this 1965 episode of "Password," and how, in Episode 4 of Season 1 of "Joe Pera Talks With You," Joe, dancing, says "Do you think AI will dance like this?," and Sarah says "No, because they don’t have genitals." How does that make Grok feel? 

But back to Meghan Markle. I'm not going to ask why it's a story that she wore a shirt while doing something and why the headline doesn't prioritize what she did, which was to arrange flowers, which would only make us wonder why it's a story that she arranged flowers. What I want is to clarify is what was meant by "Flower Arranging With Dog Guy." I assumed, the entire time I was down the rathole with Grok, that Markle had a guy who helped her with her dogs, that a "Dog Guy" was like a "Pool Guy," and for some reason, the Dog Guy got involved in the effort to arrange flowers. But no. Here's the Instagram InStyle wrote the headline about:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Meghan, Duchess of Sussex (@meghan)

So Guy was the name of her dog. And the dog was not participating in the flower arranging. He was just running around the general area. I don't know much about flower arranging, but I do have some confidence in my word arranging, and that headline needs work. But I'm not doing the work. I'm writing this post to say that I find my misreading delightful and enjoy thinking about this phantom character, the dog guy. I kind of am married to a dog guy. If we ever get a dog, I want to name him Whisperer so I can go around referring to my "Dog Whisperer." Or do you prefer Whiskerer? I can tell you Grok thought both names were brilliant. 

Does "We are going to be taking away Harvard’s Tax Exempt Status" = "he is stripping Harvard University of its tax-exempt status"?

I'm reading the NY Post:

"President Trump said Friday he is stripping Harvard University of its tax-exempt status.

“We are going to be taking away Harvard’s Tax Exempt Status. It’s what they deserve!” he said in a Truth Social post.

I think the post is losing something in the paraphrase. Trump's post speaks of doing something in the future. The NY Post portrays him as in the process of doing it now.

In any event, this is a big deal. Also a big deal in the news this morning: "Trump orders end to federal funding for NPR and PBS" (NPR). 

President Trump signed an executive order Thursday directing the Corporation for Public Broadcasting's board of directors to "cease federal funding for NPR and PBS," the nation's primary public broadcasters. Trump contends that news coverage by NPR and PBS contains a left-wing bias. The federal funding for NPR and PBS is appropriated by Congress....

"Which viewpoints NPR and PBS promote does not matter," the executive order says. "What does matter is that neither entity presents a fair, accurate or unbiased portrayal of current events to tax-paying citizens."

"Is there footage of this thing gasping for breath for two minutes before expiring? I need some light comedy before bed."

Says one commenter on "SC cop killer Mikal Mahdi chose upscale final meal before he was executed by firing squad" (NY Post).

And there is this, from Mahdi's lawyer: "Faced with barbaric and inhumane choices, Mikal Mahdi had chosen the lesser of the three evils.... Mikal chose the firing squad instead of being burned and mutilated in the electric chair, or suffering the lingering death on the lethal injection gurney."

Having given you 2 sides of the death penalty issue, I will take the liberty to turn the topic to grammar — the lawyer's grammar. You shouldn't say "the lesser of three evils." It's correct to say "the lesser of 2 evils," but "lesser" is used when there are only 2 things. If there are more than 2, you've got to use "least" — "the least of 3 evils."

That "the lesser of 2 evils" is a very common phrase and "the least/lesser of 3 evils" feels new is evidence of our tendency to see our choices as binary.

For the annals of Things I Asked Grok:

"You might think such a scene — lines of strangers ogling an exposed female body lying in the middle of the street — would feel unsettling or prurient...."

"Instead, the atmosphere felt mildly jovial, as people exchanged amused glances, shrugged, and snapped photos. Nothing untoward was happening here, because Balloon Kim seemed protected from any personal transgression. Naturally, being 60 feet long helped.... But Balloon Kim seemed impervious to transgression [because] Balloon Kim did not so much depict a person as it did a commodity, an abandoned outer shell.... By covering her famous face, Balloon Kim refused to return the onlookers’ gaze. She depicted no personal expression, and blocked even the depiction of any access to her interiority. This structure was not a portrait or a sculpture of Ms. Kardashian, but rather a very faithful recreation of the workings of Ms. Kardashian’s empire, which is built on the meticulously crafted project she has made of her body — a collection of highly public, highly exposed curves and spheres, sculpted and polished to perfection, displayed according to Ms. Kardashian’s diktats, and offered up as a series of ideals to be aspired to and emulated via the purchase of products."

Writes Rhonda Garelick, in "About That Giant Kim Kardashian in Times Square/The seamless, poreless, sanitized effigy of a capitalist titan was a startling piece of marketing for Skims" (NYT).

1. That last sentence — "This structure was not... " — is a doozy. Have I ever written "doozy" on this blog? Yes! And I've written it in the context of a long sentence that needed diagramming. So now, here's another item for the annals of Things I Asked Grok: "Diagram this sentence...."

2. "Interiority" — You might remember just last month I was asking "What kind of people use the word 'interiority'?" Encountering the word in a NYT article (about Dylan Mulvaney), I searched my blog archive and extracted the history of the word "interiority" on this blog. There were 5 earlier appearances, all of them in quotes, never used by me. One day I'll use it!

3. This post gets my "big and small" tag — which is, regular readers may know, my favorite tag. I  am amused by absurd and radical size variations. 

4. The NYT writer is doing something I've seen a lot of over the years — crediting a woman for doing something other than what you might think she's doing: selling her sexuality. 

"[Chantal] Kreviazuk, who is from Winnipeg, Manitoba, also wrote the phrase 'that only us command' with mascara on her left hand."

"She posted a picture of that on her Instagram with emojis of a Canadian flag and a flexed muscle. 'I just put it on there so if I ever had a moment and I kind of froze, I would be able to look at my hand and see it,' Kreviazuk said. 'I’d love to see people sort of get inspired and catch the fire and say their heart more in their art. ... Sometimes you just got to speak the truth in your art and it’s awesome. That’s what it should be about.'..."

From "Singer of Canadian anthem at 4 Nations Face-Off changes lyric to protest Trump’s 51st state remarks" (AP).

The official lyrics begin: "O Canada! Our home and native land! True patriot love in all of us command."

That is, the homeland commands true patriot love in all of us.

The changed lyric was "O Canada! Our home and native land! True patriot love that only us command."

So it is no longer the homeland commanding love. It is "only us" commanding love. There are several problems (aside from the problem of changing the words of the anthem):

RFK Jr. advocated banning prescription drug advertising on TV. Would that destroy mainstream TV news?

I asked Grok: What has RFK Jr. said about prescription drug advertising on TV? Answer: "Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been vocal about his opposition to prescription drug advertising on television."

I'm sure he's been "vocal... on television," but Grok is clearly trying to say that he strongly opposes "prescription drug advertising on television." I'm not going to spend my time teaching Grok grammar.

Now, I'm thinking about this topic this morning because I heard Joe Rogan — here — talking about prescription drug advertising on television. It was very interesting. But the guest, Adam Curry falls prey to what I believe is a misreading of a statistic. Curry says: 

Although we have stopped tobacco advertisements and there's all kinds of things that have been done throughout the years, but what happened with television is all the money. I mean, really 60, 70, maybe 80% of all the advertising income is from pharmaceutical companies. That's why there's also no reporting. Like, we're not gonna bite the hand that feeds us. 

Would RFK's plan to ban this advertising wreck mainstream television news?

But going back and forth with Grok, I think I figured out how the numbers got twisted. I, not Grok. But Grok gave me what I needed to see the problem. There was a report from Statista that showed "the pharmaceutical industry spent 4.58 billion U.S. dollars on advertising on national TV in the United States, which accounted for 75% of the total ad spend for that year." But people in social media have been "suggesting that 75% of cable TV advertising revenue comes from the pharmaceutical industry."

Does your human brain see the problem?

"He re-jiggers the facts, or makes them up, and rushes to tell as many people as he can so that is the version of reality that gets distributed in people’s minds...."

That sounds like humanity in general, but it's RFK Jr., described in writing by his ex-wife, who killed herself in 2012. The writing was a draft of an affidavit, to be filed in divorce proceedings.

The quote appears in this New York Post article (with an idiotic misplaced modifier in the headline): "Mary Kennedy accuses ex-husband RFK Jr. of being ‘sexual deviant’ and ‘gaslighting’ from beyond the grave."

"Their existence, and my relationships with each of them, are essential to my understanding of life itself."

That's a very strangely written sentence... by M. Gessen, in "What Democrats Are Getting Wrong About Transgender Rights" (NYT). 

Context:

I am trans and I am a parent of three children, one of whom I carried. Their existence, and my relationships with each of them, are essential to my understanding of life itself. I also have many friends (none of them trans, as it happens) who never had children. I occasionally envy their freedom. They may occasionally envy me my sprawling family. In neither case is the feeling of regret — if it can even be called that — significant or particularly long-lasting. It is, rather, an awareness that life is a series of choices, all of which are made with incomplete information.

Presumably, Gessen has one relationship with each of the children, but it's possible that Gessen really does means to claim multiple relationships with each one. I suppose the grammar was a minor distraction on the way to proclaiming the superiority of a life lived without regrets. 

Anxiety about trans people and reproduction, and the laws and rules that it produces, cut both ways...

Puzzling commas again. And why choose a cutting metaphor here? Intentional prodding of our anxiety about surgery?

There's a lot more going on in the article, which was originally titled "The Secret Behind America's Moral Panic." What's the secret? And what are "Democrats... Getting Wrong About Transgender Rights"? This is the most useful passage:

"Just moments ago, Joe Biden stated that our supporters are garbage."

"He's talking about the border patrol, he's talking about nurses, he's talking about teachers, he's talking about everyday Americans who love their country and want to dream big again and support you, Mr. President. And I hope their campaign is about to apologize for what Joe Biden just said. We are not garbage. We are patriots who love America and thank you for running Mr. President."

Said Marco Rubio to Donald Trump, on stage at Trump's rally in Allentown, Pennsylvania last night. Click the video below, which is cued up to the spot. Trump appears to be hearing this news of President Biden's statement for the first time.

Trump reacts: "Wow. That's terrible.... Remember Hillary? She said 'deplorable' and then she said 'irredeemable.' Right? But she said 'deplorable.' That didn't work out. 'Garbage,' I think is worse. Right? But he doesn't know. You have to please forgive him. Please forgive him! For he not knoweth what he said."

I believe that last bit was an attempt to evoke the words of Jesus: "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." 

Trump continues: "These people. Terrible terrible terrible — to say a thing like that, but he really doesn't know. He really, honestly, he doesn't. And I'm convinced that he likes me more than he likes Kamala. Convinced. But that's a terrible thing."

It was a terrible thing to say, but you can see that Trump knows that Biden's rhetoric — like Hillary's "deplorable" — was an excellent gift to his campaign. And it came just as Kamala Harris was delivering her big closing-argument speech that was supposed to reach out to all Americans and to characterize her as the one who, unlike Trump, embraced everybody.

Here's the NYT article about that: "Harris’s Mission: Disqualify Trump, but Extend a Hand to His Voters/Kamala Harris, in her closing argument to voters, acknowledged an inescapable political reality: Donald Trump is not a fringe figure within his own party or the nation" (free-access link):

"Roy finds deculturation everywhere: in viral controversies over whether emotional-support animals belong on airplanes..."

"... in the recent, charged debate over whether Israeli or Lebanese people invented hummus; in Disney’s 'remixing' of traditional fairy tales into profitable mega-franchises; in the struggles of universities to attract humanities majors. What unifies these phenomena, he thinks, is that they unfold in a cultural vacuum. In the past, a society could rely on 'a shared system of language, signs, symbols, representations of the world, body language, behavioural codes, and so on' to govern all sorts of situations. Today, in the absence of that shared background, we must constantly renegotiate what’s normal, acceptable, and part of 'us.' ... [Roy writes] 'Here we are on a terrain in which culture has no positive aspect, since the old culture has been delegitimized and the new one does not meet the necessary condition of any culture, which is the presence of implicit, shared understandings'.... Around the world, cultures aren’t being replaced by other cultures; the idea of 'Westernization' is a red herring, he suggests, because, despite the worldwide popularity of pizza and 'Succession,' what’s actually ascendant are 'weak identities' constructed through that 'collection of tokens.' It’s a bit like moving from a place where your family has lived for generations to a faceless suburb. You could adopt your neighbors’ traditions, if they have any, but they don’t—they’re just a random collection of people who happen to live near one another. 'You do you,' they say...."

From "Is Culture Dying? The French sociologist Olivier Roy believes that 'deculturation' is sweeping the world, with troubling consequences." The article, by Joshua Rothman in The New Yorker, reviews Oliver Roy's book "The Crisis of Culture: Identity Politics and the Empire of Norms."

Rothman writes "I’m one of those people who is 'spiritual, but not religious'" — people who is?!! I'm one of those people who remember when The New Yorker had a noble tradition of meticulous editing. Has that degenerated into a nonculture of if it sounds good, write it? But we've already analyzed this grammar issue and come up with the answer. It's a rule. If you don't follow it, your venerable institution is crumbling. You're just a random collection of scribblers who happen to publish under the same cover.

Rothman's last paragraph gestures at the struggle over immigration that's roiled American politics:

"If he is sentenced to probation... Trump would be required to clear any out-of-state travel — such as to campaign rallies and fundraisers — with a probation officer...."

"If Trump were to serve home confinement at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Fla., New York authorities would likely have to work with counterparts in Florida to accommodate him, the experts said.... 'If you have a probation officer, you are not supposed to travel without permission. Your home is subject to random search because you don’t have a Fourth Amendment right to your home being private. You can get drug-tested, potentially. Travel outside the country is difficult,' said Matthew Galluzzo, another former prosecutor in the Manhattan district attorney’s office. 'That would be super awkward for someone on the campaign trail, but not impossible,' Galluzzo said. 'If he had to go to a debate against Biden, he probably could go, but you’re supposed to make that request far in advance.'...  Merchan... could impose a financial penalty or require him to do community service or undergo counseling, some legal experts said. If the judge were to impose a more onerous penalty, such as home confinement, Trump could still find ways to continue campaigning, even if he were not on the road...."

From "If Trump were convicted in his hush money trial, here’s what he could face next/A guilty verdict for Trump in the New York trial would mean a mix of routine court processing and extraordinary logistical considerations, legal experts say" (WaPo).

Immobilizing a political opponent — have we ever seen anything like this in the United States? We will see how much this outrages Americans and turns people toward Trump. I know it outrages me. I have a strong emotional reaction. I feel as though I'm keeping a vigil for Trump today. 

***

Bonus grammar question. For the purpose of this survey, ignore the issue of whether you would opt out of grammatical correctness in this case. That's an interesting issue, but don't let it affect your answer.

Which of these is grammatically correct?

If Trump were convicted in his hush money trial...

If Trump was convicted in his hush money trial...

If Trump is convicted in his hush money trial...

If Trump were to be convicted in his hush money trial...

 

pollcode.com free polls

"Why Did the Supreme Court Wait So Long to Decide to Set the Trump Criminal Immunity Case for Full Hearing and Argument?"

"It Likely Means No Trial for Trump on Election Subversion Before the Election."

Rick Hasen asks and speculates at Election Law Blog.

Hasen quotes the Supreme Court's order:

The Special Counsel’s request to treat the stay application as a petition for a writ of certiorari is granted, and that petition is granted limited to the following question: Whether and if so to what extent does a former President enjoy presidential immunity from criminal prosecution for conduct alleged to involve official acts during his tenure in office. Without expressing a view on the merits, this Court directs the Court of Appeals to continue withholding issuance of the mandate until the sending down of the judgment of this Court. The application for a stay is dismissed as moot.

The new episode of the Advisory Opinions podcast begins with a discussion of the cert grant, and co-host David French observes that the motion for a stay would have required the Court to opine on the likelihood of success on the merits. The Court avoided that by granting cert. 

The request to treat the stay application as a petition for a writ of certiorari came from Special Counsel and reflects the interest in speeding things up. The Court granted that request, but those who want speed wanted the cert grant denied. Now that cert is granted, the speed demons criticize any taking of time. The Court should be neutral and at least has self-interest in appearing neutral. It shouldn't be for or against speed — rushing or dragging its heels.

IN THE COMMENTS: Kevin surprises me with "Rushing or dragging? That cannot be allowed":