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.