NY Times errs on "lobbyist" ("Weak" in Review section)

[Bapopik at AOL.COM]

The NY Times is just awful. From the "Week in Review," pg. 1 article by  Todd
S. Purdum (an experienced writer who should know better:
...
Jack Abramoff's trading room was his Signatures restaurant, not the front  of
the old Willard Hotel, where favor seekers so besieged Grant that he helped
popularize the label--lobbyist--that still clings to their descendants with a
pejorative sting.
...
...
Yes, "lobbyist" was known about 30 years earlier (1872 is  mentioned), but we
said "popularize" so it's OK. Why check dictionaries?  Why not give the
Willard Hotel myth another spin in  2006?