Glenn Beck is the NY Times new BoogyMan – I guess it means he has officially arrived. In this Story about the effect of the Supreme Court ruling that the EPA doesn’t have jurisdiction over pollution done with water that isn’t “navigable” (in other words if you have a pond on your farm, the EPA can’t come on your property and search for pollution and require you to get permits to use chemicals on your farm)… they throw out the “If Glenn Beck tells farmers to call their Congressman”…the switchboards will light up. They don’t cite Glenn Beck actually saying that, or examples of where Glenn Beck has said to call Congress – it’s just speculation leaving the implication that Glenn Beck must be pro water pollution. In the good old days, this was the role of Rush Limbaugh – who never gives out phone numbers for Congress and doesn’t urge people to call them.
If the New York Times were to _____, then ________ might happen….
If the New York Times were to _____, then ________ might happen….to disappear, then nothing might happen. I can’t come up with anything that makes sense, but then we are talking about the nyt…..My rambling probably makes more sense.
How about “If the New York Times printed that Barack Obama was born in Kenya, a civil war would break out”
Art, if that were to happen, pigs would start flying and the underworld would freeze over.
Exactly!…. now see if you can create a hypothetical future event and figure a way to incorporate it into a news story.