Earlier this week, I posted this correction from The New York Times:
An article on Monday about Jack Robison and Kirsten Lindsmith, two college students with Asperger syndrome who are navigating the perils of an intimate relationship, misidentified the character from the animated children’s TV show ”My Little Pony” that Ms. Lindsmith said she visualized to cheer herself up. It is Twilight Sparkle, the nerdy intellectual, not Fluttershy, the kind animal lover.
It’s not often you put the Times and My Little Pony together, and oh my do they make for a lovely combination.
It seems this correction is now something of a minor viral hit, thanks largely to BoingBoing, which posted it today with the headline, “The best New York Times correction ever.” Buzzfeed also posted it, declaring it, “The Greatest New York Times Correction Ever.”
I respectfully disagree with them, though I do think it’s lovely and worth sharing.
The popularity of this correction made me realize the Times had a string of similar and amusing pop culture-related corrections in 2011. Below is a collection of the best, along with a few oldies but goodies from earlier years.
Best of 2011
A perfect starting place is with Greg Brock, the Times senior editor who handles corrections and probably wrote most, if not all, of the ones I’m about to share. I recently asked him to choose his most memorable correction of 2011, and he came back with this perfect pick from April:
A report in the Extra Bases baseball notebook last Sunday misidentified, in some editions, the origin of the name Orcrist the Goblin Cleaver, which Mets pitcher R. A. Dickey gave one of his bats. Orcrist was not, as Dickey had said, the name of the sword used by Bilbo Baggins in the Misty Mountains in ”The Hobbit.” Orcrist was the sword used by the dwarf Thorin Oakenshield in the book. (Bilbo Baggins’s sword was called Sting.)
Brock said that “because we correct any error brought to our attention — including middle initials — we invariably end up with some funny ones.”
Next is this wonderful Muppets correction from July 2011:
A report in the Nocturnalist column on Saturday misidentified the material used to create a puppet of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg that made an appearance at an exhibition of Jim Henson’s work at the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens. Muppets, in general, are made of fleece, foam, fake fur and fabric. A spokeswoman for The Jim Henson Company refused to be more specific about the materials used to make Muppet Mayor Bloomberg (Bluppet to his friends), saying, “We consider the ‘magic’ that goes into how we make our puppets as trade secrets and beyond the info I gave, we really can’t be more specific.” What is known is that Bluppet is not made of felt.
Rounding out 2011′s best is this amusing October offering:
An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated the premise of “Angry Birds,” a popular iPhone game. In the game, slingshots are used to launch birds to destroy pigs and their fortresses, not to shoot down the birds.
Best of the Past
For choice corrections from the past, I immediately thought of this duo of Times corrections from December 2004:
A report in the “Arts, Briefly” column on Nov. 16 about a new Marvel Comics monthly series featuring the superhero Black Panther misstated his ethnicity and cited a precedent incorrectly. While many of his adventures take place in the United States he is African, not African-American. He would not have been the first African-American hero in comics in any case; the Falcon held that distinction.
And then this correction of that correction:
A report in the “Arts, Briefly” column on Nov. 16 about a new Marvel Comics monthly series featuring the superhero Black Panther misstated his ethnicity and cited a precedent incorrectly. While many of his adventures take place in the United States he is African, not African-American. The first African-American superhero in comics was the Falcon, not Black Panther. A correction in this space on Wednesday misstated the timing of their debuts. Black Panther indeed preceded the Falcon.
Then there’s this from early 2005
An obituary of the innovative comic-page illustrator Will Eisner yesterday included an imprecise comparison in some copies between his character the Spirit and others, including Batman. Unlike Superman and some other heroes of the comics, Batman relied on intelligence and skill, not supernatural powers.
In September of that same year came this embarrassing error:
A television review yesterday about “How I Met Your Mother” and “Out of Practice,” on CBS, misstated the name of the popular show, ended last season, that the network is trying to replace with another hit. It is “Everybody Loves Raymond,” not “All About Raymond.”
Did I leave out any good ones from 2011 or recent years? Let me know. Also see this previous column by me about what happens when news organizations flub details about Star Trek, Star Wars and other giants of pop culture.
Update: I was sent this great 2006 New York Times Magazine correction by Adam Bonin:
An article on Sept. 17 about the abundance of satire in American culture referred incorrectly to an episode of “South Park.” In it, the character Cartman tricks another child into eating his own parents in a bowl of chili; Cartman himself does not eat them.
Update Jan. 6: Jim Romenesko got New York Times reporter Amy Harmon, author of the piece that resulted in the above My Little Pony correction, to explain how the now famous mistake happened and was corrected. Good read.
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