The Economist (December 6th, 2003, print edition, p.28) has now followed your alert Language Log correspondent in asking why the Plain English Campaign saw fit to award Donald Rumsfeld the Foot In Mouth award. "Sorry, but what is so muddled about that?", they ask. The Guardian too, it reports, has described the Rumsfeldian remark as far from foolish, indeed, "a complex, almost Kantian thought". They are basically right, of course (even if The Economist doesn't seem to know existentialism from epistemology), but a little late. You read it here first.
Posted by Geoffrey K. Pullum at December 7, 2003 12:56 AM