From the front page of today's The New York Times:
"Despite High Hopes, Drug Plan May Be Disappointing To Elderly"
I will part with custom and explain myself. This headline is noteworthy for two reasons:
First, the prosaic--it is because of their high hopes, and not in spite of them, that the elderly might be disappointed; and
Second, the newspaper editorializes when it seeks imbue the notion of hope with a potency that is, by nature, foreign to hope. That the hopes of its constituency should have the power directly to affect the policy of any politician is almost too much to wish, but the suggestion that hope should have any power whatever over the decision making of one without legal standing to occupy the office he displaces air in is brazen. By implying a causal relation, The Times legitimates the office of the pretendership and endorses the growth of tyranny.
