How to succeed

Ah, Fox: Is it the grammar or is it the thinly disguised fiction posing as news? Or (happy day) is it both?

What we seem to have here is a sort of midterm report: one character's not doing well, the other might still meet the goals of the class. But Fox isn't interested in Vicki Kennedy's success; it's interested in whether she might succeed her husband, transitively. Given that there appears to be room for a "him" at the end of the hed, it's hard to understand why Fox took the silly route.

Well, not that hard -- Fox has its eye on bigger game: "speculation grows" that Those Democrats are up to their dynastic European succession tricks again! Its source is the always-reliable Boston Herald, sniffing out the Real Truth from a multipart series appearing, Pravda-like, in what it calls the Boring Broadsheet:

And yesterday’s installment was interpreted by some close to the matter as the first step in a torch-passing to Kennedy’s wife, Vicki.

“It appeared to be setting up Vicki’s senate campaign,” said one insider.

How we get from high-quality sourcing like that to "speculation grows" -- well, that's up to the gang at Fox. Say something often enough and eventually you can succeed in making it come true!