>> Read the original story, by James Haggerty
Wednesday, November 29, 2006
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10 comments:
Doesn't matter what Haggerty writes. His mommy, or is it his aunt?, owns the damn paper.
Why is Hags writing this story in the first place? High school students returning from a sightseeing trip to Canada is not news. Maybe if he or his editor wasn't so brain-dead from nonsense assignments this wouldn't have happened. This guy used to write Random Notes....how things have changed....and not for the better.
Wow, high school kids go to Quebec, speak French, eat French food. What an amazing story.
First Kelly's buffoonery, Connor's megalomania and now this.
The state of NEPA journalism has just gotten so damned depressing.
Hags is a good guy. He is also not related to the Lynett/Haggerty despite sharing the same last name. I encourage you to personally ask him about this, as I did, if you heard otherwise.
Half the blame has to go to the editor(s) who read this story and didn't blink at this sentence: "...They conversed with the Quebecois, who have a reputation for being rude to English speakers."
Setting aside the sheer inanity of the story, didn't anyone question painting a giant ethnic group -- one that most Times editors have likely had no contact with -- with a giant deragatory brush?
Fuckin' bush leaugers.
He should've stuck to the national scene. Like Pam and her soon-to-be ex. Or maybe an in-depth featurette on Brit and her new girlfriend, Ms. Hilton. Or better yet a fond look back to Ms. Jackson's wardrobe malfunction. Hey, the timing is right. The playoff situation is cementing itself at this very hour. Never mind REAL news about REAL people.
But what Hags skipped entirely is whether the kids ate Freedom Fries or French Fries?
That's why I like TV. Hard to have a mistake in attribution when you see people's lips moving and hear the words coming out of their mouths.
On a scale of one to Jayson Blair this ain't a biggie--but we keep learning that it's standard operating procedure for even the best of papers to make up quotes: and the fish-wrappers around here ain't the best of papers by a long shot.
...and they conversed with the Quebecois, who have a reputation for being rude to English speakers.
My family is Quebecois, living about twenty minutes east of Quebec City. I can assure you that people in that area are not rude to English speakers, but can be less than nice to Americans who act haughty to them (an all-too-common event). And don't call us "frogs."
"My family is Quebecois, living about twenty minutes east of Quebec City."
10:47 PM
Aw, Tom, you know that "Dubya" taught us all to be suspicious of furriners. Real Americans don't eat croissants. Best thing would be for them kabeckers to move to this country--but we won't let 'em!
The joke's on them! They're forced to live in a country with high literacy, a low crime rate, little poverty and little patience for war-mongering. And they dare to make fun of us for wearing plaid shorts and white knee-socks with our sandals. How can we trust people like that?
Hags wrote this story because the powers that be have decided the way to boost circulation is to get more "real" people into the newspaper. So reporters are spinning their wheels getting junk like school notes and that god-awful new people page in the Sunday paper. What used to distinguish the paper from television - hard news on local government - is virtually gone. Now A3 is stuffed with crime and accident stories. It's the same stuff you get on the 6 0'clock news. No wonder people say there's nothing to read in the paper.
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