Scorn, She Wrote, Even Pity

Last evening I tuned in to C-SPAN-2 and was immensely disappointed to find about four minutes remaining in an interview of Dr. Dinesh D’Souza about his new book The Roots of Obama’s Rage. The demeanor of the interviewer, someone I’d never seen before on any channel and whose name I do not know, amazed me. His attitude, including body language, was insulting, so far as I am concerned. While the book makes the point of the subject’s anti-colonialism and does so extremely well, this man had the audacity to say something like this, “But what about his health care plan?” The author went ahead, making the point he chose to make as time ran out. The interviewer ought to be fired. His face was dripping with pity for this author he must have deemed off his rocker. But Dr. D’Souza has produced a thorough study on the subject of which he writes and with complete documentation. His analysis of the problem discussed in the book and of the one who has the problem deserves a magnanimous award. I repeat what I said onblog October 10, “Every adult American should read The Roots of Obama’s Rage.”

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Less or Fewer

Several times during my career people have asked me which is correct: You have ten minutes or less to finish the test, or you have ten minutes or fewer to finish. Another example: I lack fifty pages or less finishing the book or fifty pages or fewer to finish. Whether minutes or pages, the answer is less. Try it with dollars. You can buy it anywhere for ten dollars or less. Would you say, ten dollars or fewer? Of course, not. The thing is, we are not thinking of minutes, pages, or dollars as individual parts, but all the minutes, pages, or dollars as units. A unit is less, not fewer.

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