You’ve Got Jokes

Eugene Volokh has revealed an insteresting newspaper correction from 1990:

From the Fresno Bee, July 21, 1990: An item in Thursday's Nation Digest about the Massachusetts budget crisis made reference to new taxes that will help put Massachusetts "back in the African-American." The item should have said "back in the black."

Deciding to do a little digging I found out that according to the AFU & Urban Legends Archive, this really happened, but was a prank, not a case of political correctness run amuck, as one might easily assume.

Story courtesy of Gary Imhoff via II-List.

One comment

  1. hm. the first scenario I thought of was that a lazy editor ran over the piece with a computer search-and-replace function, and that substitution happened by mistake.

    4/11/2003 11:20:00

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