Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, December 27, 1994 TAG: 9412280042
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A7 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ELLEN GOODMAN
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
I find the corrections particularly appealing now that public apologies are so few and far between. The art of begging pardon has become an endangered species of speech. Having a lawyer means never being able to say you're sorry.
Politicians and CEOs offer only their most choked regrets: ``If I may have inadvertently said or done something that you may have misconstrued as something that offended you. ...'' Companies pay enormous settlements to clients, employees and customers as long as they don't have to admit guilt.
Corrections are equally rare in the broadcast world, where many words go into the air and few are taken to task. How often, for example, are pundits forced to match one month's prediction against the next month's reality?
But here in Ye Olde Gutenberg world of the printed word, we tend to hold ourselves accountable. Indeed, my favorite correction/apology of 1994 came from the Chicago Tribune, which omitted the last line of a Mike Royko column: ``The last line should have said: `Eeeeyaaach.' The Tribune regrets the error.''
Well, ``eeeeyaaach'' is what I shriek when I make a mistake. So, each year, in an attempt to wipe the slate clean, I 'fess up to the errors, misstatements and mix-ups that have snuck past my private error-check software. And therefore, I once again offer my Media Culpas.
This being a political year, three culpas were culled from election coverage. This doesn't count, by the way, the miscalculation that led to my defeat in the office pool.
Media Culpa 1. In a post-election daze, I put the right words in the wrong person's mouth. It wasn't Ellen Malcolm of EMILY's List who said that many women were reluctant to run for office ``because they see the process as ... totally unappealing.'' It was Harriet Woods of the National Women's Political Caucus. Not all political women are joined at the head.
Earlier, in writing about Bob Massie Jr., the candidate for lieutenant governor of Massachusetts, I created a double byline where none existed. I said that the book ``Nicholas and Alexandra'' was co-authored by his parents, Robert and Suzanne Massie. Nope. They co-authored another book. Robert Sr. did this one by himself.
The third wrong, I am happy to right. In October, I thought that the Massachusetts Senate race was turning into a beauty contest and Ted Kennedy was a fading contestant. Oh me of little faith. By November, Kennedy turned the voters' heads.
Now onto sexual politics. I also thought Lt. Paula Coughlin had been sunk in the Tailhook sexual-harassment scandal. Well, the Navy brass got away with the gantlet gambit, but, irony of irony, Paula did win a case - against the convention hotel, not the conventioneers.
In civilian life, I wrote that what America needed in this post-Brady Bunch era was a three-parent family. A reader offered this footnote: The Bradys were a three-parent family of sorts: Mom, Dad and Alice, the longtime nanny. Do you suppose they paid her Social Security?
In honing my skills this year, I also let a ``camera hone in on'' its subject. Unless the camera had a very sharp edge, I was wrong. The camera homes in. So do the word police who let me know of my error.
The word police also caught me making two other whoppers. I spoke of a ``pre-emptory pat on the butt.'' Oops. I meant perfunctory. I also said that the Bangladeshi writer Taslimi Nasrin ``boldly, maybe foolheartedly, spoke out.'' I not only misspoke, I made up a word. That was indeed foolhardy of me, but not foolhearty.
My language problems followed me into translation. While the French were talking about banning Franglais, I thought we should ban Englench. But in that column, I used the French singular, le airbags and le jumbo jets, when I meant the plural, les airbags and les jumbo jets. Pardon my French.
Pardon my Eskimo, too. In writing about the white stuff, I repeated the common wisdom that the Eskimos had 21 words for the white stuff. The common wisdom is wrong. According to a linguistics professor, there are just two Eskimo words for snow: qanik, meaning snow in the air or snowflake, and aput, meaning snow on the ground.
On that note, I shall now pull on my boots, walk over the aput and through the qanik and into a brave new year. One last word before I go: ``eeeeyaaach.''
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