UPDATE: After I and hopefully thousands of others complained, the article has been rewritten, sort of. It's still not good writing, but some of the nausea factor has been removed. I'm going to place the relevant versions under what was posted earlier:

It's a sad day for The Language when you find writing like this coming out of Time/CNN. I am so appalled that I hardly know how to comment. I'm going to reference some paragraphs from an article I was reading online this morning. I'm not commenting on content here; I intend only to show my disgust at the lack of care in the writing, editing, and proofing of a piece put out by a major American publication. (If you haven't had your morning complement of caffeine and can't figure out what's wrong with these, email me privately.)

But now, as voter registration winds down in the next two weeks and the impact of John McCain's running mate Sarah Palin becomes clearer, the Obama campaign has apparently scaled back its outsized electoral ambitions. It is already shifting staff abandoning some states, and putting others on notice. If they once technically played in all 50, they're now down to 48 you can cross Alaska and North Dakota off the list and two other states, Montana and Georgia, are on life support. The choice of Palin not only crushed Obama's hope of winning the Frontier State the campaign has withdrawn most of its staff and ceased advertising there — it also had repercussions in North Dakota, another hockey-crazed northern state where snow mobile racing and moose burgers apparently resonate. The Obama campaign announced this week that they are redeploying their staff estimated in some press reports to be more than 50 people.

REWRITE:

But now, as voter registration is expected to wind down in the next two weeks and the impact of John McCain's running mate, Sarah Palin, becomes clearer, the Obama campaign is apparently scaling back its outsized electoral ambitions. It has already shifted staff, abandoning some states and putting others on notice. If it once technically played in all 50, it's now down to 48 — you can cross Alaska and North Dakota off the list — and two other states, Montana and Georgia, are on life support. The choice of Palin not only crushed Obama's hope of winning the Frontier State — his campaign has withdrawn most of its staff and ceased advertising there — but it also caused repercussions in North Dakota, another hockey-crazed northern state where snow-mobile racing and moose burgers apparently resonate. The Obama campaign announced this week that it is redeploying its North Dakota staff — estimated in some press reports to be more than 50 people.

Further:

Georgia is another state the campaign once had very high hopes for and is now uncertain whether to continue to invest in. They stopped advertising there before the conventions and last week redeployed some of its 75 staff to neighboring North Carolina a southern state with a large African-American electorate that has seen one of the highest levels of voter registration this cycle, with more than 400,000 new voters on the rolls. If the campaign can register enough new voters in the Peach State and they have already registered more than 300,000 in Georgia than it believes that it could still be in play, since former Georgia Congressman Bob Barr's libertarian candidacy could steal some of the Republican vote.

REWRITE:

Georgia is another state in which the campaign once had very high hopes but is now unsure whether it should continue to invest in it. The campaign stopped advertising there before the conventions and last week redeployed some of its 75 staff to neighboring North Carolina — a southern state with a large African-American electorate that has seen one of the highest levels of voter registration this cycle, with more than 400,000 new voters on the rolls. If the campaign can register enough new voters in the Peach State — and it has already registered more than 300,000 in Georgia — then it believes that the state could still be in play, since former Georgia Congressman Bob Barr's libertarian candidacy could steal some of the Republican vote.

I am speechless.

Teach your children to write. There will always be a market for good writers and proofreaders. There is obviously a shrinking pool of qualified applicants. Increasing demand + decreasing supply = economic opportunity.

(The offending article: Obama Scales Back)

Labels: Homeschooling, Language, Learning, Theater of the Absurd