RE: Agreed—and that the error is in an article by someone who is Harvard and Oxford educated (literature at Oxford no less!) is alarming,
Guys, guys, guys, you talk as if a Harvard or Oxford Professor is PERFECT in every way and never make mistakes at all.
Why is it alarming? Can’t a little oversight be made sometimes?
Don’t even grammar professors make mistakes sometimes?
Don’t FReepers make spelling mistakes? (Yes, even those English college professors...)
Here are several instances in the article where Prof. Hendrickson used the same word “its”, in the article:
#1:
“It’s decline from being arguably the world’s richest city to being America’s “first Third Word city” is tragic,”
And here:
#2:
“The city had no hope of ever recovering from its colossal over-indebtedness”
And here:
#3:
“without a central bank standing by to create fiat credit to augment its insufficient revenue”
and here:
#4:
“... the demise of Detroit may not be in vain if we learn its grim lesson and reform city, state, and the federal government from their destructive predatory policies.”
Now with the above examples, you tell me if he’s an idiot who does not know how to use apostrophes
#1 is wrong, wrong, WRONG. It is also in the third sentence in the article! I hope you are not suggesting that it was correct!
I do not expect Harvard/Oxford graduates to be perfect by any means, but I would hope (especially from Oxford—I have less faith in Harvard) that they might express their ideas, be they good or bad, at least clearly. Two of my relatively young colleagues (including the head of our English department) are Oxford educated, and they can write and express themselves.
I know people make mistakes—I do so myself frequently enough—but a grammatical mistake of this sort in the opening paragraph of an article in a reputable magazine is not something that should get a free pass.
“It’s decline from being..."
The above apostrophe denotes the possessive case. Flunk for apostrophe abuse.
Can’t a little oversight be made sometimes?
Thirty years ago, I would have wholeheartedly agreed with you, but today there's a raging epidemic of lousy English usage. This is why you're seeing so many people comment on it. Our native tongue is going to hell, and some of us object to that loss.