Dengl 9 Blurring Time

I can't remember with whom (or several people) I talked about the wretched historic present in which tv presenters (yes, it is often they who are at the fore of some gadarene gaggle ...) blur the thinking and experience of their viewers (and listeners).
It's not just the notion that one might transport people of today into an imagined past, by using the present tense to describe events that took place long ago, but the possibility that as people are not taught 'grammar' (nasty oppressive stuff) in schools, those without should not be put at a disadvantage in comparison with those who flaunt their superior knowledge and abilities ...OR, it may be that television commentary 'leads' the way towards a much less inflected language (when, one day, nouns, verbs and adjectives, will all merge into each other, tenses will be abolished - and maybe the tediously complex vocabulary exploited by some, such as the show-off Shakespeare, who used many scores of thousands of different words, could be replaced by the terse lexicon with which great writers like Racine (who is said to have made do with a vocabulary of well under ten thousand words) succeeded ...

I had not thought I would very soon be reminded that it is not just the present being enfolded into the past, but the future being enfolded into the present that I might choose to worry about. A recent job advertisement I saw - quoted below - reminds me that it is very common in 'human resources' prose to confuse skills that people do actually possess here and now, with ones they might one day acquire ... I could imagine an interview at which, without any evidence of having the required skills referred to, now, I resorted to charging the employer (to be) that it would be their responsibility to train me to acquire such skills, as implied in the terms of their advertisement ....

here is the example ... (I am sure you will come across many others)

_____________________________

Director of XX

XX is a member-led grassroots organisation aiming to ...... promote community cohesion and to act as a model of best practice.

The organisation is looking for its first Director to drive forward a programme of meetings, events, and publications, building partnerships and establishing XX as an independent and sustainable organisation.

You will be (sic) a good communicator, have an understanding of inter faith work, a strong track record of working at senior levels with public and voluntary sectors, and attracting support for funders and government in politically sensitive environments. The Director will need to be able to work under pressure, combining imagination with good management practice.
.....
Closing date for applications is 5pm on Wednesday 5th December 2007.
We intend to hold interviews in London Sunday 6th January 2008.
|_______________________

A more complex time-blur is found in a letter to The Psychologist (vol.20 No 11, p 664) in which the writer reports "In 1897 W.H.R.Rivers would be appointed Lecturer in ...Cambridge" - while there is no doubt that he WAS appointed.

I wonder how widespread time-blurring now is; whether it is becoming more common; whether we will ever (in English) return to a time when a 'time-line' from the past through to the future will be described with precision - and I wonder whether a 'post-modern' type of justification is now taking over, implying that "old linear time" is an illusion of the modernist phase in science and philosophy and can be dispensed with. Maybe in certain realms of poetry, drama and fiction time-blurring is a welcome device - but perhaps not in non-fiction?