Is There a Draft in Here?

The following is an excerpt from OpinionJournal’s “Best of the Web” at WSJ written by the editor, James Taranto.

News You Can Use
“Leaving Gun Where Drunk Person Can Easily Get It May Be Tortious”—headline, Washington Post website, Feb. 6

Other Than That, the Story Was Accurate
“The crossword puzzle on Page 48 of the Magazine this weekend, seeking the name of a compa-ny [sic] as the answer for 111-Across, transposes the Hebrew letters in the clue. It should be: אל על, not לע לא. . . . A column by Gail Collins on Thursday wrongly referred to a book title. It is ‘God, Guns, Grits and Gravy,’ not ‘God, Guts, Grits and Gravy.’ ”—New York Times, Feb. 7

Is There a Draft in Here?
Saturday’s New York Times featured an editorial about Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin—except that throughout the text, as blogger John Hinderaker notes, the editors referred to Walker as “Mr. Scott.” It isn’t clear if they were mixing Walker up with the governor of Florida or the chief engineer of the starship Enterprise.

The error has now been fixed, and normally we’d file this under “Other Than That, the Story Was Accurate,” but that would require a correction, which the Times hasn’t issued in this case. Hinderaker rails that the paper “attempted the ridiculous excuse that the pernicious editing . . . was simply ‘a drafting error.’ ”

Oh wait, sorry—that wasn’t Hinderaker. The superfluous adjectives should have given it away. That quote came from the Times’s denunciation of the governor formerly known as Mr. Scott.

For more “Best of the Web” click here and look for the “Best of the Web Today” link in the middle column below “Today’s Columnists.”