There's a report afoot that Paul Krugman, in his Nobel acceptance speech yesterday, said that the US auto industry was going to die. We are at the mercy here of one Malin Rising, the AP's Stockholm correspondent apparently, who wrote:
STOCKHOLM, Sweden (AP) — Nobel economics prize winner Paul Krugman said Sunday that the beleaguered U.S. auto industry will likely disappear.
"It will do so because of the geographical forces that me and my colleagues have discussed," the Princeton University professor and New York Times columnist told reporters in Stockholm. "It is no longer sustained by the current economy."
First of all, I'm given to understand that Krugman said only that the US auto industry would disperse from Detroit over time (hence the phrase "geographic forces").
But secondly, Rising's credibility is impeached by the phrase "that me and my colleagues have discussed." I can promise you that Krugman would never say those illiterate words. It's bad enough that an AP reporter wrote them. Sheesh.
This is even worse than one of my grammatical pet peeves of all time, the substitution of "I" for "me" in sentences in which the speaker thinks "I" sounds somehow classier. Between you and I....Steve was talking to Shelley and I when...Lots of allegedly intelligent people make both of these errors, the second one especially. Wake up, English speakers! Your heritage is at risk! Take it from I, mon.
