Legal Commentary

NYT Overdoes the Etymology of Morton's Fork

By Professor University of Miami School of Law

This has to be the most bizzaro sentence in my newspaper in some time. Explaining the origins of 'Morton's fork', prose stylist Clyde Haberman may have gone slightly overboard on the pop culture:

It is named for John Morton, an English lord chancellor in the 15th century who shaped a make-everyone-pay policy for tax collection under Henry VII, one king too soon for Herman's Hermits.

Get the context at On New York Ballot, Questions With No Good Choices.

Incidentally, I also think the basic conceit of the article is wrong: there is no Morton's Fork (“two alternatives that will produce equally unpalatable results”) here as one of the choices is better than the status quo, which is the other choice.

Anyway, what's wrong with Hobson's Choice?

Full post as published by Discourse.net on October 29, 2010 (boomark / email).