What? The New York Times mis-identified munitions in a photo accompanying a story about the attempted plinking of Ayman Al-Zawahiri? They called an artillery shell a missile component?
Bah. Who’s keeping score, anyway?
Me, of course…
TOP ELEVEN NEW YORK TIMES MUNITIONS BLUNDERS
11. Listed “Bow-Mounted Flamethrower” among armaments aboard the U.S.S. Naitulus. Everyone knows you mount then astern to burn any submarines chasing you.
10. Cain slew Abel with the jawbone of an ass, not a 357 Magnum as a gun control editorial by Maureen Dowd claimed in 2003.
9. The United States only had two completed nuclear bombs in 1945. A third weapon named “Big Boy” in the shade of a fat junevile in checkered pants holding an upraised platter with a hamburger on it may or may not have existed, but it was certainly never dropped on Tokyo.
8. Atomic bomb was dropped on Japan by the Enola Gay, not the Ben Gay. (blatant example of inserting advertising within news copy?)
7. Mistook actual authentic Native American tomahawks for Tomahawk missiles during French-Indian War in a scathing anti-Native American casinos lobbying editorial back in 1995. (still waiting on the retraction)
6. That’s no space station, it’s a moon. The Death Star does not exist, Tom Friedman, nor is there a top-secret Defense Department project to build one. (yet)
5. “The Charge Of The Light Brigade” was not, in fact, done with flashlights. (we’re not sure what William Safire was smoking that day)
4. Claimed that the U.S.S. Maine was sunk “by a really huge friggin’ rock hurled by angry giants.” (But Jayson Blair claims he has photos, he just can’t find which CDs he burned the files to)
3. Classic depiction of Yosemite Sam mis-identified as a sword-wielding ninja during Kennedy-Nixon debates.
2. Abraham Lincoln was not assassinated with a Zulu spear by John Wilkes Booth. Booth merely carried the spear as a backup should his pistols jam, and it served as a makeshift crutch after fracturing his ankle in the leap from the box to the stage.
1. The Firebombing of Dresden was not accomplished using fire-breathing serpents, wyrms, or dragons, no matter what Kurt Vonnegut may have told you in an exclusive interview. He was just trying to get into your pants.