What a great idea! From Media Week.
Who's That In The Eyeshade?
By Lewis Grossberger
What we urgently need now, Media Person solemnly declares, is a law savagely penalizing any individual who makes a public statement without first running it by a copy editor.
Too many error-prone people are wandering around unedited. Media Person doesn't care about their run-on sentences and dangling modifiers, though it would be a nice collateral benefit to clean those up, too. He's talking about the lying and the stupidity. He's talking about a copy editor demanding of, say, Rush Limbaugh:
"Hey, Rush, you haven't backed up your lead! When you state that Michael J. Fox is faking symptoms of Parkinson's to gain sympathy, you have to give some evidence. I mean have you called a doctor specializing in this disease and asked any questions about the symptoms and the medication? Have you called Fox or his PR guy and questioned them? Or are you just pulling this stuff out of your nether orifice as usual?"
Or let's say that some future U.S. President (of course this could never really happen, but let's just go with a hypothetical here) is about to announce an invasion of some mythical Middle Eastern country because it has allegedly attacked us once, (though it really didn't, because in fact someone else did) and now poses an even direr threat to our security using alleged weapons of mass destruction (which, in fact, do not exist). Under Media Person's Mandatory Copy Editor Act, the frazzled, overworked desk man or woman sitting in the Oval Office right next to the hypothetical chief executive would look over his statement, and, utilizing a thick black pencil (preferably the kind where you pull a little string and unravel some paper to expose more lead, if they still make them), scrawl HUH? and WHO SEZ?? and HOW WE KNOW??? And R U KIDDING???? all over it and hand it back for a rewrite.
(snip)
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