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Archive for the 'Misquotations' Category

Exclusive! Must Credit Taipei Times!

Published by William Beutler on June 28, 2007 in Al Gore, Democrats, International, Misquotations, Seriously, Urban Legends and White House '08. 0 Comments

As you read this, the following item from the Taipei Times is being forwarded from Washington outbox to Beltway inbox, setting hearts aflutter and livers atwitter (emphasis added):

Al Gore visit postponed Former US vice president Al Gore will not be able to make it to Taiwan this September to address the issue of global warming, Democratic Progressive Party Legislator Tien Chiu-chin [Chinese symbols WordPress doesn't recognize] said yesterday. Tien, who invited Gore to visit Taiwan to promote awareness on global warming, told reporters yesterday that she received an e-mail from the Harry Walker Agency, which has the exclusive right to arrange Gore’s speeches, saying that Gore had canceled all his scheduled events in the next six months. The visit to Taiwan had been postponed to next year, she added. Tien said the reason for the cancelation was that Gore was considering a presidential bid.

This amazing news exclusive just happened to come from a Democratic Progressive Party Legislator in Taiwan? Riiiight. But I could see this Tien Chiu-chin misinterpreting a canceled event or exaggerating to make himself sound more important. Or maybe the uncredited reporter simply misheard it.

But before this misbegotten blurb becomes a full-fledged urban legend, let’s dig a little deeper, because there’s both less and more to the story.

For anybody just coming across this story tonight, see Raising Kaine, where Lowell Feld apparently fact-checked this against Gore’s office and obtained the following denial:

It is completely and utterly false. 1. He never accepted an event in Taiwan 2. We have loads of events on the schedule in the next six months I don’t know how to spell bubkus but there’s no credibility to this whatsoever.

Wow, so much for benefit of the doubt. Does the Taipei Times have a Stephen Glass problem? Probably not, actually — Harry Walker Agency is no Jukt Micronics — and in fact it does represent The Honorable Al Gore.

If my hunch is right, then the biggest loser of all — besides the latent Gore supporters currently propping up Edwards and Obama — would be none other than Tien Chiu-chin, whose credibility on the 2008 U.S. presidential race may never fully recover.

P.S. Last summer I took to saying “All politics is national.” This time, let’s try “All politics is global.”

Spit And Vinegar

Published by William Beutler on July 24, 2006 in Al Gore, MSM and Misquotations. 1 Comment

In Sunday’s Washington Post, writer Michael Grunwald has a (mostly) tongue-in-cheek column suggesting that the numerous Democratic 2008 hopefuls consider Al Gore a potential running mate. In doing so, he invokes one of the most famous put-downs* of the vice presidency:

John Nance Garner famously said that the vice presidency wasn’t worth a bucket of warm spit, and for Garner (who served under FDR) it probably wasn’t.

The problem is, this isn’t what Garner said. I can’t prove this as the moment, as Bartleby.com is still using the 1919 edition of Bartlett’s Quotations. But angry letter-writers to both the LA Weekly and Salon.com agree with me, and Google confirms (Exhibit A, Exhibit B) that the prevailing version is “a bucket of warm piss.” I mean, think about it for a second: Who would have the time to fill a whole bucket with spit?

This was hardly the first time I’ve seen Garner misquoted, and I decided to ask Grunwald himself if this was an editor’s call or his own decision. He got back to me in short order:

I’m embarrassed to admit that I didn’t even know the original quote was “warm piss.” I certainly would have gone for the accurate version if I had, although as you undoubtedly know, “warm spit” is how the quotation has come down through the ages, probably because (according to my quick google search) the reporters who wrote about it at the time all used the euphemism.

He’s certainly right about that, and to this day some newspapers try to keep cursing at least out of their print editions, even when the word is an integral part of the story. The New York Times struggled with President Bush’s recent reference to an even less savory human excretion — not the first time a mic has caught his mild expletives, either — while the Post let the president speak for himself. As in Garner’s day, the mass media still worries about offending the masses’ sensibilities.

Grunwald also isn’t the only knowledgable person to get this quote wrong. TCU history professor Michael L. Collins has passed the saying along as “a quart of warm piss.” Earlier this year Jonathan Alter of Newsweek (the Post’s sister publication) pointed out the “piss” vs. “spit” discrepancy — apparently Garner wasn’t pleased with the bowdlerized version — but somehow got “bucket” mixed up with “pitcher.”

How serious is this, really? Well, the quote is funnier in its original incarnation, and depicts Garner’s orneriness more accurately. To be sure, the euphemism doesn’t withhold any significant facts, but for those who do know the actual quote, it probably does hurt a newspaper’s reputation, or that of the reporter, to see “spit” in print.

Absent the explanation — which is why I asked Grunwald first — it sounds like the Post is keeping an inconvenient truth (ba dum) from its readers. It may be wrong to suggest that a paper which will hide the ugly truth on small things will also hide the truth about larger things; I don’t think it necessarily follows, certainly not as a matter of logic — but that doesn’t mean people won’t think it. It’s a small thing, but accuracy is still the best policy.

The Post should run a correction, but they’ll probably judge this below the threshhold of what matters. After all, the “spit” quote has a history of its own. What the Post really should have done is make comments available on political stories already.

*The other, and my personal favorite, is from Sen. Daniel Webster, who rejected Zachary Taylor’s offer to run with him (the two had both sought the Whig nomination) in 1848, saying:

I do not propose to be buried until I am dead.

Taylor went on to win the election, but died soon after, which would have made Webster president anyway. Instead we got Millard Fillmore.