Wednesday, February 4, 2015

Netwok* (for Network*)

Last March, in what has to be the greatest spelling bee irony ever (one that tops even the excruciating flubbing of a word like misspell), Fox News went on the air with an un-be-lievable rendering of the term "spelling bee," which it carelessly seems to have lost interest in after the second e. "Longest spelling be ever?" the crawl limply yawns. "11 & 13 year olds finally finish competition." (It's really too bad they couldn't have managed to finish their own not-so-very long word there. To "bee" or not to "be"? Um, what was the question?) Okay, okay, I know it's a little too much fun to make sport of stuff like this, and I guess we're all human and everything, but seriously, guys. What kind of a world are we living in where people don't even have to think before they write? Or after? Or when it's not even people doing the writing? Fox is often not seen as the most stellar of news outlets, but silly slips of the techno-tongue and slaps in the face of geeky schoolchildren (kidding!) like that one can only spell future disdain for the current network. There were 12 cases of today's typo in OhioLINK, and 331 in WorldCat.

(Fox News Live, TV interview, NYC, 4 April 2011, from Wikimedia Commons.)

Carol Reid

No comments: