Oops -- our bad

Do you ever get the impression that the media lie to you? Well -- despite the fact I’ve toiled in the trade for a goodly chunk of my adult life – they do.

Not necessarily intentionally, but sometimes they make mistakes. I know that for a fact. I have even made mistakes in some of the stories I’ve filed over the years. And, once it’s pointed out it becomes one of those “oh, shit!” moments in one’s life.

Meanwhile, as reporters make factual gaffes in stories, and editors (increasingly, it seems) fail to find them, there are always those who feel it is their bounden duty to point out the transgressions of scribes.

These are the folks who write letters to the editor raging against a misplaced modifier, or a run-on sentence. I say, ‘screw them’. “You think it’s so easy, then you come in and write the prose of Henry James whilst bucking a deadline that ran out 10 minutes before.”

We once got a letter from a woman who was a schoolteacher, who decried our misuse of something or other, and furthermore noted what disgraces we were to contemporary usage. As I was letters editor at the time, I couldn’t resist replying on the editorial page. I stated that while I appreciated her astute observation of our transgression, her first paragraph contained the longest run-on sentence that had surely ever been penned in the English language.

Well, why not, f’heaven’s sake?

Anyway, as the language has deteriorated (I’d like to go back to my schoolteacher and blame the schools – I can do that, since I was once a teacher) and we must accept that reality in this post-literate age of text messaging and all that crap, I suppose, I actually find myself becoming more concerned about factual errors in information that purports to tell the truth, while what is being stated is pure tosh.

Say, howsabout that for one of them run-on sentences?

Anyway, in terms of journalist lies, tarradiddles, and pig-ignorance disguised as veracity, you now can find help. Check out the site http://www.regrettheerror.com/ and you will be set straight. This is great fun, since it is a resource that scrutinizes the world’s media – print and electronic – and itemizes the errors. Interestingly, the staid New York Times definitely comes up wanting more often than should make any publisher comfortable.

But, the world of today is a mass of information, and so much of it is ill-founded, it is good to have an organization that has set its mind to at least trying to set the record straight.

I said at the outset, I had made the odd error in my career, but not many. More fun for me was arguable a couple of the headline gaffes that were a result of my creative efforts, and for which I actually won ‘inappropriate headline awards.’

One concerned a competition in which good citizens were asked to nominate neighbors who were good and helpful citizens, and the best entries would win a prize. At the end of a long and tiring day, I wrote, while trying to be poetic:

‘Why not enter thy neighbor?’

The other concern a town a few miles to the south of us that has (for a reason best known to them) a gigantic replica hockey stick next to the local arena It was quite a while in the making. I wrote the headline:

‘Giant stick nears erection’

I'm confused. Please help me

Life is full of imponderables and unanswered questions. The world is often a confused, confusing and illogical place in which things happen and no reasons are necessarily given. As follows are just some of those questions. This is not a rant – far be it from me to do such a thing – but more of a series of queries. Maybe you have the answers. If so, please help me out. If you don’t have the answers, well then I guess you’re just as confused as I am.

Whatever happened to the business theory that the happiness of the customer must always come first? Case in point: Wendy and I stopped at a little joint for coffee this morning. It was a bitterly cold (for the time of year) morning, so we nipped inside this place to warm up and to have a latte. Sitting there with our drinks we realized we were just as cold as we were outside. We realized the door to the street was wide-open. Wendy went to the counter and asked that the door be shut. The young female of whom she enquired offered the rejoinder that “the boss likes the door to be open.” I see, so the customers can be miserably cold, but the $#@^& boss wants the door to be open. So, the boss is saying, in effect, “screw the customers!” Well, I say, screw the boss. We won’t be back and we’ll rejoice to see the business fold. Like, what don’t you get, folks?

Window-dressing mission statements. In the same context, many organizations are governed by a so-called ‘mission-statement’ that invariably holds, once you are through all the accompanying mumbo-jumbo and bafflegab, that the organization exists to serve the wellbeing of the client. When did that actually last happen? When did you ever run across an organization, like say the Post Office, in which the welfare of the Post Office and its employees wasn’t much more important than the convenience of the client?

How many ways can you spell hypocrisy? At the so-called ‘green’ Oscars, did the self-aggrandizing, environmentally aware tinseltown folk arrive at the ceremonies on bicycles or public transit? Did Al Gore? How did he get out to Hollywood? By bus? Well, I didn’t watch, so maybe I missed their red-carpet arrivals.

How many ways can you spell ill-considered? Prince Harry is going off to war. One can admire his patriotism in wanting to do an Iraq combat tour. What one cannot admire is the fact that he will be an immediate enemy target as a symbolic martyr. What one also cannot admire is all those who serve in his same sector will also have their chances of being blown away increased a thousandfold.

Did somebody think there actually was a ‘good time' for diarrhea? I don’t mean to be indelicate here, but there is a TV commercial in which a young woman at lunch with friends suddenly grimaces in pain, and we are told she is in some sort of bowel-distress, and that she should take whatever it is they’re pushing because “It’s never a good time for diarrhea.” I’m glad I now know that because maybe I’d thought there was.

Does anybody really believe this? Gasoline prices have been ridiculously high of late. OK, we have to swallow that because the whole thing with prices is a racket anyway, and we all know that. But then we notice that if the per gallon price per gallon or liter goes to a certain point, that all stations offer their fuel at exactly the same price. Our elected officials tell us there is no price-fixing going on. I think we’re also told that pigs will fly.

Banks advertise on television and extol the wonderful rates they will offer their customers. Why do they do that? Everybody knows Bank B down the street will offer ‘exactly’ the same rates as Bank A. Maybe some people don’t. That’s very, very scary.

Huh? There’s an ad on TV that extols the virtues for people of a certain age to use the equity in their homes to finance all and sundry. Better than to just have all that investment tied up in a simple structure. It’s known as reverse-mortgaging, though the ad doesn’t call it that. One of the suggestions is that maybe you could use the money to finance a first home for the kids. My God, I can hear my old man now: “Say, Pop, could you an Mom put your place in hock so me’n Mandy can get a house of our own.” Delicacy forbids me suggesting how he might have responded. What happened to young people taking care of themselves? Are the old folks now obligated until they close the box on them? “You say you can’t afford a mortgage? Well, I guess that means you can’t afford a mortgage.”

Just my thoughts on this first day of March which this year came in like a three-toed sloth, rather than a lion or a lamb.