I have been thinking for some time that I would like to write a blog on the subjunctive.  One of my blog followers, an astute man named Gabe, was kind enough to give me fodder for bringing this topic to the top of my list.

For the second time in The Essay Expert’s blogging history, I turn to President Obama’s grammar bloopers.  The first was his incorrect use of “tenant” when he meant “tenet” in his speech following the Tucson shootings (The President Makes Grammatical Errors Too!). This week I’m pointing to Obama’s statement about the texting transgressions of Congressman Weiner.

Obama’s Grammatical Error

Said the President, according to many news sources, “If it was me, I’d resign.”

I won’t spend a lot of time explaining that a more proper structure of this sentence would have been, “If it were me, I’d resign.”  Put simply, this is a conditional statement, speaking about an event that is not sure to happen and that did not definitively happen.  Any time you see the word “if” in a sentence, watch out for the subjunctive.  The correct verb form is most likely “were.” A good explanation of the subjunctive can be found on EnglishClub.com.

I also won’t spend a lot of time harping on the fact that the President used the incorrect form of the pronoun “me.” The truly correct phrasing would have been, “If it were I, I would resign.” Note that “I” is a subject pronoun.  But who really talks like that?

Meet The Press:  To Quote or Not to Quote?

What interests me most is the way the press handled the situation.  You might remember that when the President said “tenant” instead of “tenet” in his Tucson shooting speech, the transcription of his speech corrected his error.  In the Weiner situation the press went to bat for Obama again — but not universally.  I’ve created a snapshot of press coverage of the issue below.

[Challenge to reader:  How many double entendres can you find in the body of this article? If you find one, report it in the comments!]

The New York Times

Michael Barbaro of The New York Times covered up (or worked around) the President’s grammatical errors as follows in his article, Obama Suggests Weiner Should Resign:

President Obama told NBC News that if he were in Representative Anthony D. Weiner’s position, “I would resign,” according to a senior network executive.

Fox

In contrast, Fox quoted Obama word for word in their article, Obama Says He Would Resign in Weiner’s Position:

“I can tell you that if it was me, I would resign,” Obama told Ann Curry in an interview scheduled to air Tuesday on NBC’s “Today.”

How many times do you think that one got tweeted?

Youtube/Hollyscoop.com

Hollyscoop.com, in the midst of making references to porn star names, fixed the subjunctive issue on its youtube video report, but did not touch the improper pronoun:

Now the President is saying, “I can tell you that if it were me I’d resign…”

Maybe these folks need a grammar lesson too.

Pundit Press

Pundit Press left the error waving in the wind, both in the title and body of its article:

Title:

PRESIDENT OBAMA: “If it was me, I would resign.”

Body:

Obama did not call for the resignation of Anthony Weiner, but did say, “I can tell you that if it was me, I would resign.”

CNN

Finally, CNN’s article by Ashley Killough maintains picture perfect grammatical integrity in its headline, Obama On Weiner:  ‘I Would Resign’, but exposes Obama’s actual wording in the text:

(CNN) — President Barack Obama told NBC’s Ann Curry in an interview to air on Tuesday’s “Today,” that if he were in Rep. Anthony Weiner’s shoes, he would leave Congress.

 

“I can tell you that if it was me, I would resign,” Obama said.

 

Grammatically correct or not, Obama’s opinion surely had an impact.  Weiner has stepped down, probably due to the uncovering of his lies more than anything else.

If you were a reporter, how would you have handled Obama’s grammatical error?  And why did Clinton survive his sex scandal, whereas Weiner was trampled?  The Christian Science Monitor has shed some light on this question in its article, Why Democrats turned on Anthony Weiner, but not Bill Clinton.

I suppose we can all be comforted that no one (even The Essay Expert) will push for politicians to step down due to grammatical transgressions.