the cart or the horse?

[Jonathan Lighter]

A CNN viewer scolds that by interrupting coverage of Japan and Libya to
report on President Obama's sports picks, the network is "putting the cart
before the horse."

She unmistakably means "granting priority to the wrong thing."

To non-native speakers of Inglish like me, to "put the cart before the
horse" means to do or to reason about two things, foolishly or illogically,
in the reverse order.

JL

--
"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

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