For two days now, too. Perhaps I’m too literal or something, but on CNN’s front page, this article was headlined:
Original ‘Marlboro Man’ dead after a life spent not smoking
And, from the article:
The rancher and philanthropist best known for playing the original “Marlboro Man” has died after a life spent not smoking.
NO NO NO NO. You don’t spend time NOT doing things!
Now, look, I’m an inadvertent advocate of new ways to express, in writing, inner thoughts in order to convey them to your readers. Contending adjectives, verbing nouns, contradictory assertions, all that sort of thing.
But this doesn’t work. It evokes nothing but annoyance. Simply say he played a smoker, but wasn’t. He didn’t waste his time with it. Something like that.
Stop it, CNN.
