Tuesday, January 03, 2006
The diligent picking of nits
Hard as it may be to believe, I'm going to begin the day picking on the New York Times. As full as the paper's editorial pages are with misrepresentations, sleight-of-hand arguments, blown predictions masquerading as statements of fact, and unacknowledged changes in position, it is more relentless than a Japanese customs inspector in its pursuit of tiny defects. Behold the sum total of the corrections in this morning's "for the record" box:
Fine, Guvna Corzine probably cares about the extra "h", but does anybody else? The second correction reveals either an understandable typo or a copy editor with no knowledge of human events (it is hard to know which), and the third tells us nothing that we did not already know: that Frank Rich makes it up as he goes along. How do you make up history?
An Op-Ed article on Nov. 25 about a Senate resolution to honor Bruce Springsteen misspelled the given name of one of its sponsors. It is Jon Corzine, not John.
An Op-Ed article on Dec. 4 about what President Bush could learn from John F. Kennedy misstated the year of Mr. Bush's "mission accomplished" speech aboard an aircraft carrier. It was 2003, not 2004.
Frank Rich's column on Dec. 25 about the "war on Christmas" referred incorrectly to how suspected witches were killed in colonial Salem, Mass. Nineteen were hanged, and one was pressed to death. None were burned.
Fine, Guvna Corzine probably cares about the extra "h", but does anybody else? The second correction reveals either an understandable typo or a copy editor with no knowledge of human events (it is hard to know which), and the third tells us nothing that we did not already know: that Frank Rich makes it up as he goes along. How do you make up history?
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