Sunday March 13, 2011

WON'T SOMEONE PLEASE THINK OF THE TRACTORS? You may recall a few weeks back that William Jacobson found I had picked the wrong number from a story about union demonstrations, which I then corrected, leading an invasion of trolls to insist the correction meant that my whole article was wrong. Professor Jacobson said this gave him a "great morning."

This weekend there was another huge union protest in Madison, and the Professor went in search of more morning thrills. Here's what he came up with:

The New York Times reported that "Farmers descended on the Capitol in Madison to protest the budget bill, trundling around in a brigade of tractors," and featured a photo of someone on a tractor in its story about the protest yesterday in Madison.

A brigade of tractors? I realize The Times probably was using the term figuratively, but even so, since a brigade typically is 3,000-5,000 soldiers in number, certainly The Times was talking big numbers of tractors in Madison, right?

The Professor determines there were only 50-60 tractors, which means that the references to a brigade had been "fanciful exaggerations by people who bitterly cling to the glory days of the 1930s union movement, not realizing that the world has passed them by." Sure, something like 100,000 people attended, but there weren't enough tractors, and that's the important thing. Soon the Professors' minions will be out demanding apologies.

I'm sure Jacobson got another good morning out of this, but he's kind of like the guy you see standing on the corner every morning grinning to himself; eventually you figure out that what at first looked like a positive attitude is just plain imbecility.