The "dispute"

Ann Althouse likes to show us how the media, especially the New York Times, presents the news of the day. For instance, the biggest story of the day is that a judge is trying to make available to Judicial Watch 14,900 emails Hillary did not release. The Times writers begin,

The dispute over Hillary Clinton’s email practices now threatens to shadow her for the rest of the presidential campaign after the disclosure on Monday that the F.B.I. collected nearly 15,000 new emails in its investigation of her and a federal judge’s order that the State Department accelerate the documents’ release.

As a result, thousands of emails that Mrs. Clinton did not voluntarily turn over to the State Department last year could be released just weeks before the election in November. The order, by Judge James E. Boasberg of Federal District Court, came the same day a conservative watchdog group separately released hundreds of emails from one of Mrs. Clinton’s closest aides, Huma Abedin, which put a new focus on the sometimes awkward ties between the Clinton Foundation and the State Department....

Ann observes,

That is, the timetable is what it is because Clinton didn't turn over all the email. It's not as though the judge is synchronizing the email with the eve of the election to try to affect it. It's more as though he's endeavoring to get through his work in time to thwart what looks like a scheme of depriving us of material we need until after the election.

And I love the way the opening line of the NYT article is structured to eclipse the human actor: "The dispute over Hillary Clinton’s email practices now threatens to shadow her for the rest of the presidential campaign...."

Is Hillary the person even there? The subject of the sentence is the "dispute." Better watch out for the active and dangerous character called The dispute. It "threatens." What does it threaten to do? To shadow her. The dispute is a creepy stalker! Hillary is there in the sentence. Not where her name is. That's the possessive, modifying "practices," which is what the dispute is about. Hillary the person is there as the "her," the victim of the creepy stalker that is the dispute.

Read more here.