by Geoffrey Nunberg

"Are you extremely bothered, somewhat bothered, or not at all bothered by stores that try to be politically correct by wishing customers a Happy Holiday out of fear of offending those who do not celebrate Christmas?" That was one item in a Zogby online poll on attitudes about holiday greetings that has gotten a lot of play in the press. As loaded questions go, it ranks with some of the items that the Bush campaign used in push polls against John McCain in the 2000 election. Since this has a linguistic angle, I've blogged it over at LanguageLog--for more on the story, go here.