media gaffes

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CNN Pulls a Boehner (BAY-ner)

A kindhearted reader just wrote to us:

Don’t feel so bad about gettting Boehner’s name wrong. CNN put Shadegg’s photo next to a Boehner headline:

shadegg for boehner.JPG

Boehner Elected House Majority Leader [CNN]

Remainders: Useful Conifers Edition

Those locks. That shine. The style. The Pataki. [Gothamist]

CNN: When Lou Rawls Death isn’t busting holes in the time-space continuum, they have plenty of time to pop some corn and watch grieving families experience heartbreak. [Gawker, FreeWilliamsburg]— DCEIVER

Those of you who thought there was a war on Christmas can all rest easy. Just as soon as they’re de-ornamented, drilled, tied to cinderblocks and tossed in a lake, we’ll be happy to call them “Christmas” Trees. [Reuters]

Remainders: Penultimately Penning On the Pevensie’s Pensiveness Edition

• Editor and Publisher calls last night’s mining news snafu “one of the most disturbing media performances of its kind in recent years.” Uhm, isn’t it more logical to say that the terrible communication between officials and the families of the lost miners was the disturbing media performance? You better check your heavy-handedness amp, E&P, it looks like it’s turned to eleven. [Editor and Publisher]

• Scott’s response: “Uhh, I appreciate that…”, natch. [AmericaBlog]

• Forbes reports hoax story of Narnia pulling out from WTO meetings as truth, briefly sending markets for Mr. Pibb and Red Vines into a tailspin, threatening crazy deliciousness everywhere. [Cinematical]— DCEIVER

Jejune Bug

It’s been a mixed blessing of a first day for me since Wonkette’s e-mail cup, filled with bile and other assorted goodies, slosheth at only half full. (I’m told this never happens.) And the subject that’s been most bandied about at this neverending banquet of ass-fuckery? Linguistics, or more specifically The Note’s unexplained yanking of “jejune” — followed by the covert and highly weird replacement of it with “peppery” — from a post about Bush’s “cowboy swagger and yuppie self-consciousness.”

Now, I’d be a lousy Christopher Hitchens acolyte if I failed to take this opportunity to point out that Kingsley Amis and one of his modestly successful offspring used to bond, game-of-catch-like, over the maiming of the English language. “Jejune” was one of their favorite solecisms because “lacking in nutritive value” is really the primary definition; frequent misuse altered the word to make it mean something like “callow,” which it in fact does mean to deadline-harried writers not afraid to fall down and go boom.

Woody Allen rang what should have been the final knell, so to speak, on the pretentiousness of “jejune” in Love and Death: “You have the temerity to accuse me of jejunosity? I’m one of the most june people I know.”

And so that’s that. Thanks to the blogosphere for stitching up and then unraveling again this minor CBS memo of the OED. —MICHAEL WEISS

McCaslin’s Memo on Mysterious Duplicate Mentions

We received this letter yesterday regarding the allegation that WT’s gossipmonger John McCaslin lifted his item about liberal bleating at a screening of “The Killers” from a right-wing blog:

As sent to Fishbowl…..
Garrett, thanks (I think) for the pair of plugs. I liked the first item better. My source for the item in question, who was a member of the film audience, is obviously the contributor to the blog. What appeared in my column is what he sent to me — in his own language — after he had telephoned me while I was in California that same week. He obviously rewrote what he had written for the Libertas blog. I had never seen the blog item until you posted portions of its text next to my text. I would appreciate you making this clear in your next fishbowl.
Thank you, John McCaslin

There you go. McCaslin is not a plagiarist. And we don’t know where you got the idea he was lazy.

OK, there are two possibilities here [No More Mr. Nice Blog]
Happy Weekend Trails [FishbowlDC]
Lifting Material from the Blog World [Wonkette]