Tuesday being April Fool's Day, beginning the month in which Uncle Sam makes us all feel like poor fools, I thought it instructive to reflect on past foolishness of mine.
Many newspaper news rooms maintain what's called an ``Oops board''
that displays mistakes writers and editors allow to slip into
print. I've had my share of embarassments on the Oops board.
I take heart from an error in the famous poem, ``On First Looking
Into Chapman's Homer,'' by John Keats, where he speaks of ``stout
Cortez'' gazing in discovery upon the Pacific Ocean.
Oops.
According to Western historians, the Pacific Ocean was
first recorded by Balboa not Cortez.
Keats' error, however, doesn't detract from the greatness of his
poem. In fact, because of his historical confusion, the poem has
probably won a wider reading than it ever would have had he poetically
recorded historically correct information.
More recently, my heart goes out to fellow writer John Riha. His
article on Pulitzer Prize-winning historian -- and ardent baseball
fan -- Doris Kearns Goodwin in the February edition of Northwest
Airlines' magazine, ``World Traveler,'' opens with a gruesome
error of sports history.
The article begins, ``As Bobby Thomson's home run sailed over
the right field wall of Ebbets Field, ending the Brooklyn Dodgers'
hopes of playing in the 1951 World Series, her [Goodwin's] eight-year-old
heart was completely broken.''
Oops.
Thomson hit his famous ``shot heard 'round the world''
not in Ebbets Field but in the Polo Grounds, home of the then-New
York Giants for whom he played. Furthermore, his home run dropped
into the left field grandstand and was nowhere near the right
field wall at Ebbets Field.
I don't know whether the error is Goodwin's or Riha's, but either
way it's a grievous mistake of baseball history in an article
extolling the virtue of careful historical research and attention
to accurate details.
In the few years that I've been putting my thoughts, feelings
and speculations in print as a columnist, I've had a few stout-Cortezes
and misdirected home-runs slip past me and past the editors at
Pacific Stars and Stripes but not past readers, some of whom --
graciously or caustically -- have written to correct me.
I'm most ashamed of having once written that the Brooklyn Dodgers,
the baseball team that shepherded me into manhood only to abandon
me in Brooklyn for La-La Land, departed Brooklyn in 1956.
Oops.
It was after the 1957 season that they headed West.
I guess you had to live in Brooklyn in 1956 the know the real
meaning of hurt and termination when news broke that our team
was abandoning us.
A colleague writer caught me putting actor Tom Cruise in the movie
``The Right Stuff.''
Oops.
Unfortunately, it was too late to stop the presses. Cruise starred
in ``Top Gun.'' It didn't matter much to the point I was attempting
to make about macho-pilot movies, but any time misinformation
like that gets into print, a writer's credibility is risked a
bit. Unless, of course, you're John Keats.
My editors have saved me at times, too. Can anyone imagine the
chagrin I'd have faced with young people if my writing had reached
print that the Grammy Award-winning album ``Unplugged'' with the
Grammy Award-winning song, ``Will I See You in Heaven?'' was recorded
by Eric CLAYTON?
An alert editor saved me from living with that typo,
and reminds me of it every chance he gets.
As much as I express my love and respect for the Bible, I've twice
made errors in my writings about the sacred text.
Once, I attributed laughter to Simeon when he heard of God's ways
of dealing with humans.
Oops.
Simeon didn't laugh, he composed the Nunc Dimittus, one of the
great songs of praise in the Scriptures about being ready to die
after he'd seen God's hand at work.
Another time, in trying to give consumers a guide through the
maze of translations of the Bible, I wrote that the NIV -- New
International Version -- was a scholarly revision.
Oops.
It isn't a revision of anything, unless one considers all translations
revisions of the original Hebrew, Greek and Aramaic. The NIV is
a fresh, new translation from the ancient languages.
That error was clearly a typo on my part, but my copy
editors missed it. My Bible-student friends in the audience didn't.
I've written opinions that I have since recanted as foolish.
Ben Bradlee, the former editor of The Washington Post, convinced
me in his memoir that the anonymous ``Deep Throat'' of Watergate
is a genuine person and not a composite character. Of course,
no one but writer Bob Woodward knows Deep Throat's identity.
Modern researchers of the disappearance of famed female aviator
Amelia Earhart have convinced me to alter my perception that Earhart
could have been on a spying mission for the U.S. government when
she disappeared. The flight figures simply don't add up on that
one; it looks like human error -- probably hers -- led to her
disappearance and apparent death.
Most recently I have put into print that the mystery writer Ian
Fleming broke into the best-seller lists in the late '60s with
the encouragement of then-president John F. Kennedy.
Oops.
The assassinated president did not return from the grave
to encourage the mystery writer at that time. JFK did express
appreciation for Fleming while the president was still alive,
and Fleming did become famous in the late 60s. I misleadingly
tied the two events together in the latter part of the decade.
I've also been a victim of errors. In the very first column I
wrote for this newspaper, the editors misspelled my name.
Oops.
As an old country song puts it, ``Now and then there's a fool
such as I.''
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Allan R. Andrews can be contacted at allan.andrews@reporters.net