A post by Maynard
California residents know that brushfires are inevitable, and we mostly take them in stride. If I may be permitted a moment of questionable taste (blame Maynard for this, not Tammy!), the 2007 Malibu fire is remembered for a most unfortunate closed captioning error (no doubt due to a glitch in some newfangled speech-to-text computer algorithm). It seems that the news reporter was articulating the difficulty of firefighters having to deal not only with the fires but also “people in the middle of the road evacuating”, and the captioning came across as…well, I guess you’ll just have to see for yourself. (This happened on KABC; it’s inconceivable that FoxNews could ever make such a mistake.)
That captioning is something Kubrickish (as in Stanley Kubrick).
Reminds me of a typo that appeared on MSNBC once. Of course, if it appeared on Fox News…
http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/outrage/innis.asp
Even when they have all the time in the world captioners often make mistakes. I have a DVD of Singin’ in the Rain where Donald O’Conner says about Gene Kelly’s character in a French Revolution picture that “You’re a French aristocrat and she’s a common girl of the people and she won’t even give you a tumbrel.” (reference to tumbrel carts used to take people to have their heads chopped off.)
The captioner used “tumble” instead. Sometimes I wonder if anyone studies history any more.