Patterico's Pontifications

9/2/2008

Fee Fi Fo Frum, The Copy Editor’s a Bum

Filed under: General — Patterico @ 9:58 pm



The other day I mocked David Frum for saying:

If anything were to happen to a President McCain, the destiny of the free world would be placed in the hands of a woman who until the day before Friday was a small-town mayor

As I said: “Well, he didn’t say which Friday.”

Frum is now blaming a copy editor:

In my National Post piece, linked below, I described Sarah Palin as a person who “until the day before yesterday,” was serving as a small-town mayor. Some helpful copy-editor decided it would be more exact to change “the day before yesterday” to “the day before Friday.” That alteration transformed my deliberate hyperbole into a flat-out error. Of course I am aware that Sarah Palin was the governor of Alaska the day before yesterday – and indeed that she remains the governor of Alaska today, and my apologies that the final copy said otherwise.

That’s what I like about blogging: all the mistakes are mine!

Sorry to have to tell you this, Dave, but so is this one — at least in part. Obviously the copy editor was fooled by the “hyperbole.” Chances are a not-insignificant number of less informed readers would have been fooled by the original language as well.

Frum could have avoided this by being less cute and dismissive and more, well, honest.

In other words: maybe next time lay off the hyperbole and you won’t end up looking like such a jackass.

4 Responses to “Fee Fi Fo Frum, The Copy Editor’s a Bum”

  1. Let’s get with the truth Patrick– we thinking people have learned to ignore the likes of the ignoramous David Frum and the neo-Stalinist creeps at the LA Times.

    Mescalero (6b61fa)

  2. Except, of course, that until Friday, she was NOT a small town mayor. She was the GOVERNOR of a state that borders a hostile nation.

    otcconan (8b7d8d)

  3. Does “the day before yesterday” have some idiomatic meaning I’m not aware of, akin to saying someone was “born yesterday” (only to have a copy editor change that to “born on Tuesday, September 2, 2008)? Or is Frum just a jackass for writing what he wrote, and a bigger jackass still for blaming his jackassery on a copy-editor?

    That’s not a rhetorical question, but I’m leaning toward the latter. After all, this isn’t the first time in recent memory that Frum has pulled an asshole move to promote his own interest at the expense of his (?) party’s and his (?) nation’s. Recall the Miers nomination, which Frum proudly scooped two months before it occurred, while keeping his disdain for Miers under wraps until after the appointment had been announced. Then, within minutes of it being announced, he suddenly became the expert on all things Miers, led the jihad against her, and ultimately became the publicly “hero” who killed the nomination, rather than the real but unsung hero who could have prevented the nomination before it happened.

    Xrlq (62cad4)

  4. But being a state governo still isn’t as much experience as a community organizer!

    Terri (621639)


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