Has the New York Times fired all its editors?

It begins with the New York Times hiring people to plow through Palin’s emails.  And it ends, at least for today, with an article about children whose behavior doesn’t conform to their gender, in which the Times makes an egregious grammatical error:

At first, Harry’s father had a hard time watching his son twirl around in princess wear. But his gift of the Barbie symbolized acceptance; Harry’s joyous gasp indicated that the little boy intuitively understood. “We are following his lead and supporting him for who he wants to be,” said Lee, who, like [sic] other parents interviewed for this article, did not want to be fully identified in order to protect their [sic] children [sic].

Does no one at the Times know that, if you have a singular subject (“Lee”), you have to have a singular indefinite pronoun (“his,” not “their”).  The same goes for the object of the indefinite pronoun, which should also be singular as it refers to Lee’s child, not the “children” of  “other parents.”  The fundamental problem is that both the writer and editor managed to miss the fact that “like other parents interviewed for this article” is a subordinate clause.  Worse, “like” is shoddy, slangy subordinate conjunction.  Did neither writer nor editor ever see the old Winston cigarette advertisements?  To be both elegant and grammatically correct, the second sentence in the paragraph above should read as follows:

“We are following his lead and supporting him for who he wants to be,” said Lee, who, in common with [or “as is true for” or something equally elegant] other parents interviewed for this article, did not want to be fully identified in order to protect his [sic] child.

In addition to abandoning fact-based, superficially objective journalism, the New York Times has apparently fired those writers and editors with a minimal grasp of the English language.

If you’re interested in better grammar than the Times’ articles (although I’ll admit to a few stray typos), try The Bookworm Turns : A Secret Conservative in Liberal Land, available in e-format for $4.99 at Amazon, Smashwords or through your iBook app.