This weekend I visited the web site for Marketplace Morning Report. It's a business news program often broadcast on public radio stations during NPR's Morning Edition and other shows. But Saturday, I noticed one enormous typo in this transcript of last Monday's interview with their Washington bureau chief, John Dimsdale.
Hobson: All right, what about the federal highway funding bill — this is the transportation bill. It's been debated back and forth but still no agreement on it, and I guess the fucking could come to a halt at the end of the month if they don't come up with a solution?
Dimsdale: That's right.
Gee, I hope not!
Click here for a screenshot. It apparently stayed up on their site for seven days before someone finally noticed the mistake Sunday afternoon and took it down. (I was always pretty sure that it was the funding that could come to a halt at the end of the month...) And according to the site's social media icons, the link has been shared exactly once on Twitter, while being completely ignored on Facebook and on Google Plus. Though it seems like there'd be a lot to say...
So let me help get things started. "The fucking could come to a halt at the end of the month, people! Don't you realize what this means?!!"
Maybe their transcriber was inserting some political commentary — that the funding of highway construction bills has a negative effect on the electorate which is equivalent to having your Congressman come to your house and then fuck you. But don't worry, because the fucking could come to a halt at the end of the month. Er, did we really need a Washington Bureau Chief to explain that to us?
The rest of the article talked about the Congressmen's "short-term extensions." I pray to god that that doesn't mean what I think it means...
Maybe it's "Surrealism News Week" over at American Public Radio. Maybe the transcriber's mind wandered to that big argument he'd had last night with his girlfriend. Or maybe the transcriber just really hates taxpayer-funded highway projects. Did Marketplace Morning Report inadvertently hire the Tea Party transcription service?
Besides Marketplace Morning Report, American Public Radio also distributes Garrison Keillor's Prairie Home Companion. Er, I just hope they're not using the same transcribers. The good news is, on Friday the highway bill eventually did make it through Congress, and it saved millions of American jobs, if you believe what the Democrats are telling you. But I think that's really overlooking what's the true significance of this bill's passage.
The fucking didn't come to a halt at the end of the month.
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