A few more egregious examples of media illiteracy. 

Today's mangled verbiage comes to us courtesy of  political megablog The Huffington Post.  Our first entry is drawn from an article by someone named Joe Cutbirth about the potential appointment of Caroline Kennedy to the US Senate seat in New York being vacated by Hillary Clinton:

 Out of town at the Washington Post, Ann Kornblut let us know that Kennedy had a catharsis of sorts during the Obama campaign and learned she liked public life more than she thought.

First, let's be clear:  The word 'catharsis' does not appear anywhere in Ann Kornblut's Post article.  Second:  the use of the word "catharsis" in this context is just plain meaningless:

ca⋅thar⋅sis

1.	the purging of the emotions or relieving of emotional tensions, esp. through certain kinds of art, as tragedy or music.

2.	Medicine/Medical. purgation.

3.	Psychiatry a. psychotherapy that encourages or permits the discharge of pent-up, socially unacceptable affects. b. discharge of pent-up emotions so as to result in the alleviation of symptoms or the permanent relief of the condition.

---

Origin:
1795–1805; < NL < Gk kátharsis a cleansing, equiv. to kathar- (var. s. of kathaírein to cleanse, deriv. of katharós pure) + -sis -sis

Kennedy's burgeoning interest in national politics is not a result of a 'cleansing,' 'purging,' or 'purification.'  Rather, what is being suggested here is that Kennedy has decided to enter political lif as a result of an epiphany, in the secular sense:

e·piph·a·ny  

1. Epiphany
   1. A Christian feast celebrating the manifestation of the divine nature of Jesus to the Gentiles as represented by the Magi.
   2. January 6, on which this feast is traditionally observed.
   3. A sudden manifestation of the essence or meaning of something.
   4. A comprehension or perception of reality by means of a sudden intuitive realization: "I experienced an epiphany, a spiritual flash that would change the way I viewed myself" (Frank Maier).
2. A revelatory manifestation of a divine being.
3. 1. A sudden manifestation of the essence or meaning of something.
   2. A comprehension or perception of reality by means of a sudden intuitive realization: "I experienced an epiphany, a spiritual flash that would change the way I viewed myself" (Frank Maier).

The suggestion is not that Kennedy purged, voided, or emptied herself of previous knowledge, past history, or emotional baggage to conclude she should try to become a Senator; rather, the suggestion is that Kennedy had a change of heart, reversing her prior reluctance to engage in the family business, because she came to some new realization that made this seem a viable option when it hadn't before.  She was not 'cleansed' by serving in the Obama campaign; rather, she gained a new understanding of and interest in politics.  Even this is a bit of a stretch - an even more accurate or useful phrase would be that Kennedy experienced a "change of heart" or "felt a call to service" - but 'catharsis' is just wrong here.

The second collection of tortured and twisted grammicide is handed down to us from the mountaintop of Robert J. Elisberg in his article, "Dear Republicans:  You lost.  Get over it."

"The second is that the poll shows that while presidents do start with positive approvals, they are not generally at the elevated levels Mr. Obama has already reached."

At best, this is a very clumsy sentence; it should read "...with positive approval ratings..."  Let's go back to seventh grade for a bit of diagramming and rewrite (I'll spare you the diagrams):

Mr. Obama has already reached elevated approvals.

versus

Mr. Obama has already reached elevated approval ratings.

Hopefully that makes the error stand out a little more for those of you who aren't quite at anal-retentive about language as I am.

Moving on:

"While 42% said that newly-elected Bill Clinton "had the right set of goals," it is 12 points higher for Barack Obama."

Abuse of a pronoun, 5-paragraph penalty.  A more effective and proper way to express the above sentiment might be:

While 42% said that newly-elected Bill Clinton "had the right set of goals," twelve percent more said this about Obama.
While 42% said that newly-elected Bill Clinton "had the right set of goals," the number of respondents saying this about Obama was 54%.

The problem is, "it" is never actually defined.  This is similar to the "30% more cleaning power!" claims on soap boxes; "cleaning power" has no meaning, and no quantitative, objective measure.  In the above sentence (and in its context), "it" appears to be post-election approval rating of Obama's goals among polled voters...but the rating is never referred to as such, only as 42%.  While on the surface the sentence appears to be grammatically correct, it is in fact content-free.

Next:

"Americans believe Barack Obama's personal characteristics to be president are 17 points higher than when Bill Clinton first took office."

HUH?  I think this is supposed to mean that the difference between Americans who see Obama as having 'presidential' personality traits versus those who saw Bill Clinton that way is 17%, but honestly...I can't tell for sure what the heck this is supposed to actually be saying.

"With the Republicans and Barack Obama, however, they are just attempting empty smears that the public has repeatedly shown its disdainful lack of interest "

Abuse of a preposition, fifteen-word penalty.  "With the Republicans and Barack Obama, however, they are just attempting empty smears (in which/for which) the public..."

"Only after his actions were clearly driving the nation seriously off-track (as three-quarters of the country now says), did his approval plummet to its current 25%."

Bush's actions were clearly driving the nation seriously off-track long before 9-11.  Only after it became clear to most of us that his actions were driving the nation seriously off-track (as three-quarters of the country now says), did his approval plummet to its current 25%.

Of course, written that way it also becomes clear that the above sentence is a multi-level redundancy.  A similarly-written sentence about a baseball game might read, "Only after the Tigers were several points behind the Cubs did they start losing."

"So, if Republicans want to throw only pointless mud at the nation's incoming president"

Throw only pointless mud?  As opposed to throwing pointed mud?  "Pointless" is redundant, as that is implied by the likening of their attacks to mud or mud-slinging; furthermore, "only" is misplaced.  "If the Republicans only want to (optional:  'pointlessly') throw mud at the nation's incoming president..."

Now all of this abuse of language is bad enough; as I've said many times, we can hardly fault our young people for questionable literacy when our major media outlets can't manage to string together coherent sentences on a consistent basis. But the real horror story on Mr. Elisberg begins when one reads his biography at HP:

"Robert J. Elisberg has been a commentator and contributor to such publications as the Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Daily News, Los Angeles Magazine, C/NET and E! Online, and served on the editorial board for the Writers Guild of America.

Born in Chicago, he attended Northwestern University and received his MFA from UCLA, where he was twice awarded the Lucille Ball Award for comedy screenwriting."

Not only am I now seriously questioning the value of the UCLA Masters in Fine Arts program, not to mention that of the Writers Guild of America, but I'm convinced that this bio contains yet another grammatical error:  That last sentence should read, "...where he was twice awarded the Lucille Ball Award for comedic (as in, laughable) screenwriting."

I'm sure that Robert J. Elisberg is a nice guy and probably fairly bright, even though it's pretty difficult to see it in this article.  I'd be much more convinced of this, however, if he wrote his own article rather than passing it off to a first-year English student in a non-English-speaking country.  The idea that this kind of malformed screed actually issued forth from a writer who is a member of an editorial board for a guild of professional writers is beyond the pale.  Please, Mr. Elisberg:  Before you edit the mote from your neighbor's article, remove the beam from your own.

(Definitions courtesy of http://dictionary.reference.com)