The Twitterati collectively rubbed their eyes and raised their eyebrows yesterday when the NY Times‘ Opinion page tweeted a hoot that couldn’t be blamed on the social-media staff: The mistaken posting accurately reproduced an astonishing error that appeared online yesterday (Saturday) in an Op-Ed column by Maureen Dowd, and was published in the “Sunday Review” section of today’s hardcopy of the newspaper:
Give Hillary Clinton a break! Where were the NY Times’ copy editors when Dowd really needed them? Hillary won the internet yesterday with her mischievous riposte (which referenced this Dowd column about weed-enhanced snacks):
The Times has since trashed its erroneous tweet, belatedly righting matters with this re-write:
Correction: An earlier version of this column incorrectly said it had been 36 years since a man and a woman ran on a Democratic Party ticket. It has been that long since a man chose a woman to run as V.P. on the Democratic ticket. We’ve deleted a tweet that repeated the error.
— New York Times Opinion (@nytopinion) August 8, 2020
But the damage had already been done: Not only had many people already seen (and mocked) the original version, but by the time the editors became aware of the gaffe, it was apparently too late to change the hardcopy of at least the paper’s “Early Edition” that was delivered to my door Sunday morning. (Note, especially, the third paragraph, which was quoted verbatim in the deleted tweet.)
The Times’ blunder was even more bizarre in light of Dowd’s explicit reference, 11 paragraphs down, to Hillary’s Presidential campaign debate:
Ferraro walked the same tightrope [emphasis added] that tripped up Hillary Clinton when she wondered if she should wheel around in that debate and tell the creeping Donald Trump to scram.
The only way to explain the uncaught inconsistency is that the copy editors were self-quarantining, their computers were down because of the recent tropical storm, and Dowd’s long-term memory while writing her piece was sharper than her short-term recall—a common problem for seniors.
For me, slightly older than Dowd and blogging without a editorial safety net, her Ferraro Failure was an object lesson: If I commit a blunder that embarrassing, I might decide it’s time to pack it in and spend more time with the grandkids.
Please pass the brownies…
UPDATE: Maybe I somehow missed it, but I haven’t been able to find in today’s NY Times hardcopy a correction of Dowd’s blooper that was published in yesterday’s paper. Maybe tomorrow?
But let’s give the rueful last word (with apologies to Stephen Sondheim) to Tim Kaine, the forgotten (by Dowd) veep candidate:
Might I respond with my friend Hillary, borrowing from the great Stephen Sondheim:
“Good times and bum times
I’ve seen ‘em all
And my dear
I’m still here” https://t.co/nbW0G7p2c3— Tim Kaine (@timkaine) August 8, 2020
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