It has just been announced that President Obama will nominate Merrick Garland to NOT being confirmed to the Supreme Court. The Senate will be following the advice of Joe Biden to not confirm any nominations to the Supreme Court so Garland's name is doomed to fade away to being a mere footnote in history. On the plus side, another possible nominee, Sri Srinivasan, although he was not named by Obama, will forever be remembered. Not for anything he has done as a judge but for inspiring perhaps the funniest newspaper correction ever. The New York Times yesterday, perhaps thinking that Srinivasan would be nominated to the high court, published a background story about him which resulted in a correction which shall live on now and forever unto the end of time in the annals of humor.
By now you are wondering what could be so funny about a correction to a story. Well, you can see it for yourself below but a warning: please put your coffee cups down now so as not to splatter the contents all over your computer screen when you read the correction:
Correction: March 15, 2016
An earlier version of this article misspelled in one instance the name of a village in India where the family of Sri Srinivasan once lived. The village is Mela Thiruvenkatanathapuram, not Mela Thiruvenkanathapuram.
The humor of that correction works at so many different levels. First of all, the utter seriousness in which the correction was made. Then there is the thought that somebody actually spotted the error of that village name and was sufficiently alarmed to notify the New York Times. Of course, the Times could have quietly made a correction that nobody would have noticed but noooooo, they had to subject itself to hilariious mockery by actually printing out a formal correction for all to laugh at. Oh, and can you beat the loooooong name of that town? By the fifth, sixth, or seventh vowel, most people would be completely tongue-tied. However, the article itself provides this handy dandy guide for correct pronunciation:
This village, pronounced MAY-la THEE-roo VEN-ka-ta NA-tha POO-ram, has a deserted feel...
Thank you for that, New York Times. And also thank you for providing what could be the funniest article correction ever.
Guinness Book of Records?
