There is the risk, on the other hand, of having readers with no sense of humor taking to heart a little bit of levity, kidding, whimsy. So you comment that Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura is an accomplished clown, but that Minnesotans think he's doing a good job of it. I was trying to be funny, which sometimes is tough at my age, but I didn't mean to bring up the governor's weird ideas about God. There is a continuing problem of my own rhetorical and spelling mistakes actually making it into print. That can be embarrassing.
Nothing punctures a cogent argument more quickly than garbled syntax.
Take President Bush, for instance. Bill Clinton or Jack Kennedy. In the old days when I occupied a corner of the Journal building, I had the option of proof-reading my stuff before it was printed. At times, particularly on such crucial dates such as today's, my revisions ran long. Some of my proof-reading marks were so historical even the sharpest of the editorial staff didn't know of or understand them.