The hole truth about media, and human, error
A typo in a headline about Julia Roberts has gone viral.
We now have a winner for the Most Hilarious Error of 2018.
Although there’s still half a month left in the calendar, I feel confident in calling this race. It’s over. Done. Take a bow, Post-Journal of Jamestown, New York. I haven’t laughed this hard since a headline in the East Oregonian — “Amphibious pitcher makes debut” — raised the possibility baseball was about to be played under water.
Look, I’m not ridiculing the Post-Journal or any local news outlet.
Everyone makes mistakes. To err is human. I screw up every week — just ask my wife.
And God knows, “the media” needs to stand shoulder to shoulder during this time of appalling attacks on our character.
I will never stop defending my brothers and sisters on the front lines of newsgathering. I will never stop counterpunching when the mouth-breathing, paste-eating barbarians spew their anti-MSM, “fake news” garbage at anyone who violates a fictional world view constructed with partisan bricks and the mortar of intellectual dishonesty. These Orwellian reprobates can go to hell.
The media is not the “enemy of the people,” as a certain gaffe-prone president likes to repeat to his brain-bleached supporters, desperate as he is to avoid the reality and consequences of a lifetime of deceit and corruption.
The media is a friend to democracy. The media is your friend. But, yeah, sometimes friends make mistakes.
And sometimes a typo — just one wrong letter — can disfigure the intended meaning so severely there is no way to read it without spitting out your Folgers and doubling over in hysterics while thinking, “Oh, media!”
In a recent profile of an A-list actress, which outlined her surging career and
new projects, someone at the Post-Journal forgot to proofread the headline. The result gave a straight-up Associated Press entertainment feature a regrettable Hustler vibe that was decidedly NSFW: “Julia Roberts Finds Life And Her Holes Get Better With Age.”
Even on my deathbed, the memory of this headline will make me howl.
In this age of darkness, that headline is a strobe light of bliss.
I mean, we should all be so lucky. With each passing year, my holes are failing.
But look at Ms. Roberts. Her orifices are like rare vintages in the LCBO.
It’s like her cavities exercise twice daily and eat vegetables and devour self-help books.
Her bodily hollows just keep improving, year after year, as the rest of our atrophying cracks and craters stare on with envy.
Julia’s holes are outstanding. Give those holes an Oscar!
And that’s the takeaway today: hilarious media mistakes bring us together. No matter your politics, no matter your world view, it’s impossible to read that headline and not fall out of your chair.
Instead of “roles,” someone typed “holes” and nobody caught it on deadline.
The universe can be such a rascal.
The internet has preserved dozens of weird newspaper errors and corrections over the years. Without exception, these blunders provide some of the greatest comedy of the 21st century.
There was the mea culpa after a food recipe accidentally instructed chefs to include 2 teaspoons of cement instead of cilantro.
There was the musical booboo in which a local percussionist was identified as being “on drugs,” instead of “on drums.” There was the cover design on an issue of Parents magazine that placed a model’s head over the “A” and “R,” and a green throw bubble over the top of the “T,” making it look like you were reading a periodical called “Penis.”
Then there are the dozens of headlines that, much like the Roberts fumble this week, accidentally create the wrong idea with a typo or poor phrasing: “Drunk Drivers Fail Blow Job Test,” “Students Cook And Serve Grandparents,” “Chick Accuses Some Of Her Male Colleagues of Sexism,” “Cow Urine Makes For Juicy Lem- ons,” “Bishops Agree Sex Abuse Rules,” “One-Armed Man Applauds The Kindness of Strangers,” “Homicide Victims Rarely Talk To Police,” “Starvation Can Lead to Health Hazards,” “Worker Suffers Leg Pain After Crane Drops 800 Pound Ball On His Head,” “Tiger Woods Plays With Own Balls, Nike Says” and this daylight savings reminder that inadvertently went XXX after an “L” was forgotten: “Remember to turn your cocks back one hour at 2 a.m. Sunday.”
We should pray that technology never advances to the point where even the possibility of uproarious human error is scrubbed from the media equation. These bloopers unify us all, pulling us around a campfire of absurdity. I want to keep living in a world in which “statistics show that teen pregnancy drops off significantly after the age of 25” and the city is “unsure why the sewer smells.”
These howlers are a balm for our battered souls.
Long live the forgivable media slip-up. Cheers to regretting the error.
May Julia’s glorious holes fill our lives for years to come.