Thursday, March 02, 2006

The Great Helms man in the world's greatest deliberative body.

Driving home from work today I was thinking about this amusing story

"Senator Jesse Helms (R-NC) reportedly embarrassed his staffers by referring to North Korean President Kim Jong Il as "Kim Jong [the second]*" when reading from a prepared speech. To correct this mistake, in Helms's next speech the staffers helpfully spelled the name phonetically as Kim Jong Ill. Helms referred to him that time as Kim Jong the Third."
-- "Brickbats"
Reason Magazine, May 1995



I thought "come on all they had to do was write it Kim Jong IL. That's incorrect, but so is Kim Jong Ill and no way is Senator Helms going to mistake IL for a Roman numeral ... I mean he isn't going to read 'Kim Jong the 49th is he ?' hmmm how about Kim Jong ILL what could that be ... let me see 50 minus 50 minus one how about Kim Jong the minus first."

This post is a blot on the internets, but at least I didn't have an accident so it's OK.

* update. My correction of Helms' first error is different from the quote at http://thechinadesk.tripod.com. I have edited my quote of http://thechinadesk.tripod.com's quote of Helms.

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