Myriad reasons not to say 'myriad'

"Myriad," meaning "a countless number" and derived from a Greek word for "ten thousand" (murioi), first appeared in English in 1555 -- coincidentally the year of the first appearance of "solecism."

In modern usage, "myriad" is often but mistakenly used as a fancy synonym for "many," which dilutes the proper meaning of a far more expansive concept.

This came to mind today when I saw a front-page story in the Charlottesville Daily Progress by Chris Suarez headlined "Post-rally public relations faltered," about the attempt by city officials to control the image of Charlottesville in the wake of the alt-right, neo-Nazi, white supremacist demonstrations and violence over the weekend of August 11-13.

One paragraph, referring to two public relations firms and Mayor Mike Signer, reads:

Powell Tate officials mostly helped the mayor manage requests for media interviews with national news outlets the week following the rally. On Aug. 18, Weber Shandwick provided the city a report detailing the myriad interviews Signer had done [emphasis added].

It is true that, during the week in question, Mayor Signer submitted to many on-camera and on-mic interviews from local, national, and even international news media.

I find it questionable to claim that those appearances were so numerous as to be uncountable -- essentially to be the equivalent to the stars in the sky or the grains of sand in the Sahara Desert.

"Myriad" is a word with a specific meaning. Its misuse makes it less effective. If that word is employed in myriad ways, it no longer means myriad.


 

CNN's Castro Obituary Blunder

CNN has fixed its copy by now, but in its initial reporting on the death of Cuban dictator Fidel Castro, it included a subjunctive phrase that will prove embarrassing. Noting that Castro had survived the administrations of eleven American presidents and outlived six of them, it added (in triple brackets) "NOTE: change to seven if George H.W. Bush dies before Castro."

CNN does not disappoint in its coverage of Fidel Castro's death. #standards #proofread pic.twitter.com/R2djaFfiQO

— Andrew Klavan (@andrewklavan) November 26, 2016

It's common that obituaries are prepared well in advance of the deaths of their subjects, but that doesn't mean they need not be reviewed by editors before publication.

Hat tip to Twitter user Andrew Klavan.

Did a Washington Post Metro section reporter 'blow' it?

QUESTIONABLE WORD CHOICE

In a front-page Metro section story in today's Washington Post about the possible candidates lining up to succeed retiring U.S. Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-Maryland), we find this paragraph:

Former governor Martin O’Malley (D) remained mum, but there was speculation he could shift his ambitions from a long-shot presidential bid to a race that would be more easily winnable. Associates of former lieutenant governor Anthony G. Brown (D), who lost last year’s governor’s race, put out the word that he is “seriously considering” a Senate bid.

In the print edition, under the headline "A swarm of suitors for Senate vacancy," Post reporter John Wagner did not say Anthony Brown "lost" the 2014 gubernatorial race, but rather that Brown "blew" it. (See illustration below.)

How did such a judgmental word choice make it past the Metro copy desk? While a pundit might say, with some justification, that the former Maryland lieutenant governor "blew last year's governor's race" against Republican Larry Hogan, a straight-news reporter should avoid that kind of pejorative language.

Good for the Post's online editorial team for correcting this questionable word choice -- but the print edition's copy editors deserve whatever egg lands on their faces.

Neither breakfast nor lunch but ... Bunch?

HUMOROUS TYPO

Granted, Roger Catlin's Sunday Washington Post Arts & Style piece about TV actors performing Shakespeare is meant to be tongue-in-cheek, but writers about popular culture should not make a mistake like this one:

Too bad Robert Reed isn’t around to join Florence Henderson for a turn, by the Brady Brunch couple, in “Macbeth.” Even without him, though, Henderson could take charge of the central story as Lady Macbeth, egging her man on to his deed, in the way she did as Lady Brady, conflating “Miiike!” and“Maaac!” in the process.

Along these lines, how about Eve Plumb, from that same beloved sitcom, bringing her Jan Bradyness on the road in a touring company of “The Tempest” where, when attention always seems to turn to Prospero’s daughter, as it once did to her TV sister Marcia, she can exclaim with her pained frustration, “Miranda, Miranda, Miranda!”

I'll forgive Catlin for apparently forgetting that Robert Reed was a Shakespearean-trained actor who was constantly complaining to Sherwood Schwartz and the show runners about the mediocre quality of the scripts he was given, but to forget that the title of the iconic Friday-night staple of the early 1970s was "The Brady Bunch," not "The Brady Brunch," begs for less leniency.

Of course, maybe the reference to "brunch" is a Freudian slip about Robert Reed's being gay.

The train is coming, the train is coming

REDUNDANCY 

 Obituaries make a big, fat target for criticism of poor editing, in part because they are often pulled together at the last moment, since death usually arrives inconveniently.

Newspaper obituary departments maintain files on very prominent people -- presidents, prime ministers, and movie stars -- that are ready to go at a moment's notice, just adding the subject's date, place, and cause of death.

 Lesser known individuals? Let's just say the lack of preparation may show through the final product.

Take, for instance, today's printed Washington Post obit (attributed to the Baltimore Sun) of economist and historian George W. Hilton, who was an expert on transportation. These two paragraphs will do:

Dr. Hilton’s first article in Trains magazine on the Tennessee Central Railroad was published in 1946, and in the intervening years, he wrote more than 25 articles for the magazine.

Dr. Hilton, who contributed more than 25 articles to Trains magazine over the decades, also wrote widely on topics that included British soccer, Gilbert & Sullivan, Sherlock Holmes and theater organs. He also had edited a newsletter for collectors of breweriana.

Either Dr. Hilton wrote 50 articles for two different magazines named "Trains" or some editor fell asleep at the composing desk.

For the record, the Baltimore Sun obituary, written by Frederick N. Rasmussen and slightly longer than what appears in the Post, does not contain the repetitive reference to Hilton's contributions to Trains magazine.

That makes the Post's error even more puzzling and unacceptable.

Voting in an election that never happened

FACTUAL ERROR

A factual error crept its way into an odd letter in the Charlottesville Daily Progress today, in which the writer remembers voting in an election that never happened.

 The letter, submitted by Albemarle County resident Hubert Hawkins, makes an argument about retaining Virginia's tradition of open primary elections, in which any voter, regardless of party affiliation, can participate in either the Democratic or Republican party's primaries for nominating candidates for the general election. (Virginia voters do not register by political party, so "party affiliation" is determined by the voter's own individual preference and observations of primary voting patterns and recorded financial contributions to candidates and party committees.)

Mr. Hawkins tries to undergird his point by reminiscing about the only time he crossed party lines to vote in a Republican primary:

Years ago when Oliver North opposed John Warner in the Republican primary, I was a Democrat who never sought to meddle in Republican elections. But I knew that my senator was going to be a Republican, no matter who won the party’s primary, because my party had no competitive candidate. So I voted in the Republican primary, fearful of what outcome might ensue from the victory of such a controversial character as North.

I have never regretted my vote, and I have always been grateful that Virginia law allows all voters to participate realistically in the future of the state and nation without restrictions on what party they may have belonged to.

The problem with that example? Oliver North never challenged John Warner for the Republican Party of Virginia's nomination for the U.S. Senate, in a primary or through any other method.

John Warner, Larry Sabato, Mark Warner

John Warner ran unopposed for the GOP nomination in 1990, and he had no Democratic opponent in the November election. Nancy Spannaus, a devotee of political cult leader Lyndon LaRouche, was the only other candidate on the ballot that year. Warner beat Spannaus by sweeping every county and city and earning 80.9 percent of the vote.  The absence of a Democratic general election candidate that year may be what Mr. Hawkins is trying to recall in his letter to the editor.

 In 1994, Oliver North sought the Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate and winning it in a convention against former Reagan administration official James C. Miller III. There was no primary election that year, and John Warner was not on the ballot. North went on to lose the general election to incumbent Democrat Chuck Robb in a three-way race that also included independent J. Marshall Coleman. That election was the subject of a popular documentary film, A Perfect Candidate.

 In 1996, Jim Miller challenged John Warner for the nomination in a primary election but Warner won and went on to face Democrat Mark Warner in the general election.

After serving one term as Virginia''s governor, Mark Warner eventually won John Warner's U.S. Senate seat in 2008, after John Warner decided to retire.  The two of them remain on friendly terms (as seen in this video from earlier this year) and, in fact, John Warner has endorsed Mark Warner's re-election bid this year.

Regardless of what one thinks about the merits of Mr. Hawkins' argument about open primaries, it's important that the person making that argument have his facts straight. For that matter, it is the responsibility of the newspaper's copy editors to ensure that such factual errors do not make their way into print.

It's easy enough to, as they say, "look it up."

(Adapted from a post to Rick Sincere News and Thoughts.)

Historical howlers in Sunday's Washington Post Metro section

An article in the print edition of the Washington Post on Sunday, July 27 (p. C5), includes three glaring errors that would have resulted in a failing grade on an elementary school history test, yet only one of them has been subsequently corrected on the newspaper's web site.

The article, written by Ileana Najarro with a print-edition headline "Wolf is making his last push for holiday," explains how retiring U.S. Representative Frank Wolf (R-VA10) is advancing legislation that would make Washington's Birthday a federal holiday celebrated on the actual date of his birth, February 22, rather than floating each year on the third Monday in February.

One of Najarro's errors relates to how the holiday came to be celebrated on a date other than February 22:

President Rutherford B. Hayes established Washington’s birthday in 1879 as a holiday for the District’s federal workers, Wolf said. The holiday was extended to all federal workers six years later, but it wasn’t until 1971 that it was moved to the third Monday of February as part of President Gerald Ford’s Uniform Monday Holiday Act.

Gerald Ford did not become President until August 1974. The law was passed when Lyndon Johnson was President. Johnson signed it on June 28, 1968, and it took effect January 1, 1971, when Richard Nixon was President. Ford did sign a bill in 1975 that amended the Uniform Monday Holiday Act to restore Veterans' Day commemorations to November 11, regardless of its day of the week.

A second error, also not corrected, misplaces the origins of George Washington:

Sitting in his office, [Wolf] spoke of his geographical connection to the first president: Both were originally from Philadelphia, and both have held office in Winchester.

It used to be said that "every schoolboy knows" some fact about U.S. history. One such fact is that George Washington came from Virginia. He was born in the Northern Neck, in Westmoreland County near Fredericksburg. In later years, Washington made his home at Mount Vernon, just down the Potomac River from the city that bears his name. As a military officer, Washington did maintain an office in Winchester during the 1750s in a building that still stands near Cork and Braddock Streets.

Washington also served his country in Philadelphia, presiding over the Constitutional Convention in 1787 and moving there from New York as President before the capital was established in its present location.

The sole error that was corrected reads, in the print edition, like this:

Although the holiday is still recognized as Washington's Birthday, it's come to be known as Presidents' Day, with several states honoring all presidents at once. Wolf said he abhors this "hijacking" because Washington's birthday is honored equally with that of President Richard M. Nixon, who was impeached.

Andrew Johnson was impeached. Bill Clinton was impeached. Richard Nixon resigned before articles of impeachment could be brought before the House of Representatives for a vote.  If any newspaper's editors should know this, it would be those of The Washington Post.

The Post's correction of this error appears at the top of the page on its web site:

An earlier version of this story incorrectly said that President Nixon was impeached. He resigned before he could be impeached. This version has been corrected.

The "corrected" paragraph says that Nixon "resigned in disgrace."

So... Where were the copy editors?  How did sloppiness like this make it through the Metro section's editorial process?  Will the other errors also merit corrections in print or on the Post's web site?

Note:  The web headline for Najarro's article is: "Rep. Frank Wolf’s final acts include restoring Washington’s Birthday."

Mathematical Illiteracy, or Lapse in Copy Editing?

A letter to the editor in today's Daily Progress tries to draw attention to the problem of expensive housing in the Charlottesville area. The letter writers, however, display a sad sort of incompetence when it comes to their grasp of everyday mathematics.

The writers explain that

according to the U.S. Census, the median value of owner-occupied housing in Charlottesville from 2008-2012 was $286,400. With the median household income in Charlottesville at $44,535, a mortgage on the median home value is likely more than half of your monthly net income.

That may all be accurate but the howler follows in the next paragraph:

Homes under the median value are rare, and are often no more than 800 square feet and/or in complete disrepair.

The second part of that sentence may or may not be true, but the first part is demonstrably false.

It is not possible that homes "under the median value are rare," since, by definition, 50 percent of all homes are under the median value. (The other 50 percent are, by definition, above the median value.)

Perhaps the writers were trying to say that homes available for purchase that are also below the median value are rare, but that is not what they said.

Would this kind of innumeracy (mathematical illiteracy) be solved by adopting the Common Core, or made worse by it? Or would this demonstration of innumeracy be solved more simply by having a good copy editor?

(Cross-posted from Rick Sincere News & Thoughts)

Halloween and the Rise of the 'Rebublican'

Yesterday evening, I saw an independent pro-Cuccinelli TV ad on the NBC29 5 o'clock news in Charlottesville.

Produced by something called the "Conservative Campaign Committee," it praises gubernatorial candidate Ken Cuccinelli as a "Conservative Rebublican."

You read that right: "REBUBLICAN."

With friends like these, who needs Purple PAC?

You can see the whole video here.

(Cross-posted, in slightly different form, from Bearing Drift.)

By Far the Best Typo of 2011

I have been reading Craig Shirley's new book, December 1941:  31 Days That Changed America and Saved the World (Nashville:  Thomas Nelson, 2011), which is a fascinating account of the days before and after the attack on Pearl Harbor by the Japanese on December 7, 1941.

The book is fascinating (and informative) in spite of numerous errors that are the result of inadequate editing -- errors of fact, anachronisms, and simple typos riddle the text.

Yet, of all the mistakes I have noted while reading the book, the best typographical error by far has to be one that occurs on page 169, in the chapter on "The Eighth of December."  This has to be, perhaps, one of the most ironic typos of all time.

In describing President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's preparations for his historic speech before Congress asking for a formal declaration of war against Japan, Shirley writes:

Reading the president's original manuscript of his address revealed the sheer power of words.  He initially wrote December 7, 1941, would be a day that would live in "history," but he later crossed out that word, inserted a proofreader's carrot, and scribbled "infamy."

Yes, you read that right:  "proofreader's carrot."

Shirley meant to say "caret."

Just to be clear, this is a proofreader's caret:

 And this is a carrot:

To add to the mix, a few pages later (p. 173), Shirley ends a paragraph about new rules and regulations in reaction to the new state of war with this sentence:

It was unclear how the new edits from Washington would affect second generation Japanese Americans, known as "Nisei."

If that was unclear, one thing is definitely clear:  Craig Shirley, or Thomas Nelson Publishers, needs a new copy "edictor."

Look soon for a full review of December 1941 on my companion blog, Book Reviews by Rick Sincere, where there already is a review of a similar new book by Stanley Weintraub called Pearl Harbor Christmas.

Getting Immigration Backwards

The weekly "Free for All" letters column in The Washington Post accommodates readers who want to vent about something they had read in the Post during the previous several days, often taking issue with grammar, spelling, or punctuation usage.

In yesterday's Post, letter-writer Gib Durfee objects to the way the Post had used "immigrate" in a sentence from an AP story on November 19, in which WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was said to be considering "immigrating to Switzerland."

Durfee goes on to say:

Even if readers didn't take Latin in school, they should know that a person emigrates to a new country and immigrates from the old.

It's just a matter of to and fro.

Durfee has it exactly backwards.

This would be clear especially to someone who had taken Latin in school, because they would know that "e-" at the beginning of a word suggests "outside of" or "from," as in "exit" or "exoskeleton." By contrast, the prefix "im-" suggests "in," "to," or "inside" -- compare "implode" and "explode," for instance.

In a Raleigh News & Observer column on language usage from August 2008, journalist Pam Nelson addresses precisely this issue and cites the AP Stylebook, which says:

emigrate, immigrate: One who leaves a country emigrates from it. One who comes into a country immigrates. The same principle holds for emigrant and immigrant.

Nelson goes on to explain that

[Usage expert Bryan] Garner points out that "immigrate" means to migrate into or enter (a country) and "emigrate" means to migrate away from or exit (a country). That distinction is at the heart of a mnemonic I have heard: emigrate means exit; immigrate means enter. [Theodore] Bernstein wrote that "emigrate" needs "from."  [Diana] Hacker makes the same distinction.

I really can't fault the letter writer for missing this distinction; perhaps he learned it backwards from a Latin teacher in high school.

I can, however, fault the Post's editors -- especially the "Free for All" page's copy editors -- for failing to note that the Post's (or the AP's) usage was correct from the outset, and for choosing to run a letter that took them to task for actually being correct.

What's puzzling to me, as well, is that as of 7:32 p.m. on Sunday -- more than a full day after the letter appeared in print -- not a single Post reader has commented on the newspaper's web site about the confusion exhibited (from the Latin, "to hold out") by this letter.  Are there neither emigrants nor immigrants in the Washington Post's circulation area?

Numeracy

Where did Charlottesville Daily Progress reporter Brian McNeill learn how to count?

In his August 21 piece on the move-in of first-year students at the University of Virginia this year, McNeill has this lede:

The University of Virginia was abuzz with activity Saturday as roughly 3,246 students and their families descended upon Grounds for move-in weekend.

Roughly 3,246?

That is a precise number. It is not a "rough estimate" or approximation.

He could have said "roughly 3,200" or even "roughly 3,250." But there is nothing "rough" or indeterminate about "3,246."

Where was McNeill's copy editor?

Turning Japanese

In an otherwise unobjectionable article about the decline of a business providing English-to-Japanese translations in last Saturday's Washington Post, we find this paragraph:

One morning last week, Karol Zipple, the company's only American employee, made a small pile of clips: news stories on increased Japanese demand for American wine, food-borne illnesses and the women's golf tour. Compared with coverage in previous years, it was a depressingly slim product. "We used to be buried in newsprint" before U.S. newspapers began cutting back coverage as a result of the recession and the decline of print journalism, Zipple said.

I did a double-take when I read that first sentence. Why, I wondered, was there "increased Japanese demand for ... food-borne illnesses and the women's golf tour"?

Then I realized that this was a series of separate items defined by "news stories on" rather than "increased Japanese demand for."

The ambiguity could have been avoided by rearranging the objects, like this: "news stories on food-borne illnesses, the women's golf tour, and increased Japanese demand for American wine."

Simple, isn't it?

This might also be a good time to urge the Washington Post to reinstate the serial comma in its style book. It never should have been removed in the first place.

Homophones

The New York Daily News today has an article on its web site about Vice President Joe Biden using "colorful" language in introducing President Obama at a public ceremony.  (I do not know if this article appears, or will appear, in the paper's print edition.)

Reporter Michael Sheridan writes:

Health care reform isn't just a big deal, it's a "big f---ing deal."

At least, that's what Vice President Joe Biden thinks.

The 67-year-old former senator introduced President Obama prior to his signing of the historic health care reform bill into law on Tuesday, and let the colorful word slip while shaking the commander-in-chief's hand.

"You did it," Biden told his boss. "It's a big f---ing deal."

What caught my eye -- and what makes this article fodder for this blog -- is the penultimate paragraph, which says:

Fowl language may be a favorite for vice presidents. Ex-Veep Dick Cheney famously used the infamous phrase on several occasions during his two terms.

Something tells me that Sheridan did not want to suggest that Biden and Cheney talk like our avian friends. He meant to say "foul language," not "fowl language."

A good copy editor would have caught that.

Of course, it might be that the Daily News is trying to suggest that Biden (and, by extension, Cheney) are "chicken s--t."

Muslim Redundancy

Redundancy

Even the Old Gray Lady, the New York Times itself, is not immune to the lack of sharp-eyed copy editors.

In its opinion section today, we find an article by Efraim Karsh headlined "Muslims Won't Play Together," about the Arab boycott of the Islamic Solidarity Games scheduled to take place in April in Iran.

About a third of the way through the article, we find these two sentences:

It took a mere 24 years after the Prophet’s death for the head of the universal Islamic community, the caliph Uthman, to be murdered by political rivals. This opened the floodgates to incessant infighting within the House of Islam, which has never ceased.

Doesn't it go without saying that "incessant infighting" will be something that has "never ceased"?

How Not to Help Our Childrens Learn

Educators who purport to know how best to teach children the fundamentals should first learn to write in complete sentences.

From an article in yesterday's New York Times by Susan Engel, identified as "a senior lecturer in psychology and director of the teaching program at Williams College" (emphasis added):

In order to design a curriculum that teaches what truly matters, educators should remember a basic precept of modern developmental science: developmental precursors don’t always resemble the skill to which they are leading. For example, saying the alphabet does not particularly help children learn to read. But having extended and complex conversations during toddlerhood does.

The OpEd piece is entitled "Playing to Learn."  There's no indication whether Dr. Engel passed sixth-grade grammar -- or whether her copy editor missed the class completely.

Even Letters Deserve Editors

Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts.

One of the jobs of the editor of the letters page in a newspaper is to check the facts of the letters from readers that the paper chooses to publish and correct errors, if necessary.

The letters editor of the Washington Post fell down on the job the other day. In a letter from Wes Pedersen of Chevy Chase (Maryland) about the origins of John F. Kennedy's enthusiasm for space exploration, we learn this:

In truth, Mr. Kennedy's lunar zeal was pressed upon him by his vice president, Lyndon Johnson, who explained the political and public relations importance of a dramatic move that would raise Americans' morale in the wake of the surprise orbiting of the Earth by Russia's unmanned Sputnik. Earlier, as House speaker, Johnson had been the foremost advocate of funding for NASA.

Vice President Johnson may have whispered something in JFK's ear about lunar voyages, but he did not do so as Speaker of the House -- or even as former Speaker of the House.

Washington Post editors should know that LBJ served as Majority Leader of the United States Senate. He had a short term in the House of Representatives but never rose to the post of Speaker.

Brainchild Is Father to the Man?

In an otherwise informative obituary of Reese Cleghorn, longtime dean at the University of Maryland's school of journalism, Lauren Wiseman wrote in Tuesday's Washington Post:

Mr. Cleghorn was the brainchild behind the school's successful student-operated wire service, Capital News Service, which launched in 1990 with bureaus in Washington and Annapolis. The news service stories appear in Maryland newspapers and on the McClatchy news service, which has national distribution.

No, no, no!

Capital News Service was Mr. Cleghorn's brainchild. Mr. Cleghorn was the brain behind the Capital News Service.

Does the Washington Post library lack a dictionary? Do editors look at the obituaries before they go to press?

Not Exactly Relevant, But ...

I know it's not germane to the topic claimed by this blog, but I thought it might be noteworthy to announce that I have taken the plunge and opened up a shop on CafePress, hoping to tap into the bottomless wealth of the Internet. The shop is designed to meet the gift-buying preferences of readers of my more active blog, Rick Sincere News & Thoughts.

The main page of the shop can be found here.

There is also a section devoted to Christmas products (called "Christmas Cheer"). Another section, called "Politics & Travel," will eventually be populated with products for the libertarian-minded shopper; for now, it has magnets and notecards decorated with various views of the Washington Monument and other notable buildings.

A third section, "Saints & Sinners," fulfills a more impish function. Check it out and see what I mean.

More items are sure to be added, and reminders will be posted here and at www.RickSincere.com.

Reports of His Death Are Greatly Exaggerated

Bad Punctuation, Major Factual Error

From Sunday's Washington Times comes this egregious paragraph in a review of Michael Dobbs' recent book on the Cuban Missile Crisis. UPI editor Martin Sieff writes:

But Mr. Dobbs also challenges. And demolishes many hoary myths that have obscured the true history of the crisis on the U.S. side over the decades as well. Most of all, he destroys the image of Attorney General Robert Kennedy, President John F. Kennedy's brother, as a wise, consistent force of moderation throughout the crisis. On the contrary in its early stages, RFK was one of the most unstable, shoot-from-the-hip advisers surrounding the president. "On the first day of the crisis, he was one of the leading advocates for invading Cuba and even ruminated aloud about staging a 'Sink the Maine'-type incident as a pretext for getting rid of Castro," Mr. Dobbs writes. Bobby Kennedy also played a much smaller role in the resolution of the crisis than Theodore Sorensen, the recently deceased lifelong hagiographer of the Kennedy clan, claimed, Mr. Dobbs proves.

A competent copy editor would have caught those sentence fragments at the beginning of the paragraph.

Theodore Sorensen himself must be amused by the last sentence, which describes him as "recently deceased." His admirers might be dismayed, however, to learn that the former White House advisor, who made a public appearance in Charlottesville last week, is reportedly dead.

While in Charlottesville, Sorensen talked about his experiences during the Cuban Missile Crisis. According to The Hook, a local weekly newspaper:

Sorensen, speaking to invited guests of the UVA center named for his late benefactor brother, alternated between defending "his president like a Rottweiler refusing to let go of a pant leg," as the Washington Post recently put it, and prompting guffaws (as did his sister, Institute board member Ruth Sorensen Singer, in her introduction).

For instance, the televised address Sorensen wrote for Kennedy did much more than explain the American naval blockade of Cuba. In recent years, Sorensen said, myriad men have approached him "to thank me for making that speech so scary that they could convince their girlfriends it was their last night on earth."

I am surprised that the Washington Times web site has not yet posted a correction to Sieff's, um, fatal error.