Pet Peeve

Blogging is, I know, an informal medium, but would it be too much to expect someone with an English degree from an Ivy League university to write better than Megan McCardle does on her Atlantic blog? Here's just one of her offenses today (from this post):

But of course, if Hilzoy [a prominent, pseudonymous liberal blogger] were in the Senate, she wouldn't be Hilzoy; she'd be someone who had just spent some of the best years of their life putting themself into a position to get into the Senate.

How hard would it have been to substitute her and herself for "their" and "themself" (which isn't even a word)?

Sloppy writing often correlates with sloppy thinking.