This morning, the NYT has a charming article on the decline of the semicolon. A rather un-political topic, you might think. Then, toward the bottom, the whole effect is ruined with a snide quote from Noam Chomsky about President Bush. Are NYT reporters required to shove this stuff into their stories? Do they have anti-Bush quote quotas to fill or something?

Separately, there’s the question of why the writer even bothered to contact Chomsky about semicolons. Probably because Chomsky, when he isn’t a professional left-wing nutjob, is an academic linguist. How that gives him any special authority on a question of grammar isn’t so obvious.