Missed It By That Much

By Rick Horowitz

To the many attentive readers who have written to point out that John F. Kennedy was not in fact the 13th King of Prussia, as recently indicated in this space, our sincere apologies for the error. The many demands of the column-writing trade, combined with the ever-rising flood of data in the Information Age, have made the occasional misstep all but inevitable, hard as we labor to prevent such an occurrence. Still, it ought not to have happened, and our regrets are heartfelt.

If only this had been our only mistake.

The closing of the calendar year has traditionally offered an ideal opportunity for "settling accounts," as it were. Across the land, opinion leaders of every stripe often seize the moment to correct the record and own up to the various blunders, bungles and slip-ups to which the modern-day pundit (not least your obedient servant) is, sadly, all too often prone.

Have we -- in the heat of journalistic fervor, facing the drumbeat of daily deadlines -- failed to "get it right" on every occasion? A quick review of the past 12 months provides ample grounds for humility.

Several readers, for instance, noted with dismay our comment of last January attributing the frigid weather in much of the country to a sudden dip in the Gulf Stream, when, needless to say, we meant the jet stream. Equally lamentable, in the same story, was our reference to Minneapolis as the capital of Georgia. Our apologies to the citizens of St. Paul, surely one of our favorite cities.

Similarly, when earlier this year, scientists in Scotland advanced the frontiers of genetic engineering in new and exciting ways, more rigorous research on our part would certainly have revealed that "Dolly" was a sheep and not, as we wrote at the time, a sport utility vehicle.

There were other unfortunate faux pas as well. Any schoolchild knows that Mars, "the red planet," has neither an atmosphere nor any measurable signs of life. How then, during last summer's landing of the Pathfinder spacecraft, could we have confused that alien landscape with a strip mall in Dayton, Ohio? We throw ourselves upon your abundant mercy, and promise to install a new antenna on our television set at the first possible moment.

It was "IBM," of course, and not "IMB," whose "Deep Blue" computer proved so convincingly this year that it could beat human beings at their own game -- and the game in question was chess, and not, as we unaccountably declared, horseshoes.

"Newt Gingrich" is the name of a famous politician. "Napoleon" is the name of a famous pastry. Although many readers were willing to give us the benefit of the doubt here, honesty compels us to admit: This was error, not satire.

Likewise, while many of you were willing to overlook lapses made at moments of high emotion, others were far less forgiving. You felt, not without justification, that it is precisely at such moments that fragile readers are at their most vulnerable. Accordingly, we acknowledge, and offer our most profound apologies for, our repeated references to "Dinah, Princess of Whales." Even as we were writing these words, they looked somehow misshapen. Computerized spell-checkers, we now realize, cannot do everything.

Finally, several other mistakes, though not as serious as those already cited, deserve mention nonetheless. For instance, while a number of stockbrokers do live and work there, the New York Stock Exchange itself is not, and has never been, located in Tulsa, Okla. The world leader long suspected of producing weapons of mass destruction is Saddam Hussein, not Starbucks. And Mike Tyson is not (as far as we can determine) the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board.

As the current year passes, we stand revealed once again as God's imperfect creatures, our spirits willing and our brain cells subject to all of life's exquisite vagaries. Our sporadic sins now confessed and behind us, let us press on with renewed commitment, determined to do even better in the year ahead.

Loyal Readers, we wish every one of you a healthy, happy and prosperous 1999.

12/23/97