Sticklers will be relieved to know that the New York Times wasted no time in repudiating a gross error that appeared in its pages on September 12. A reporter described the “gaudy décor” at the Beverly Hills Diner, a restaurant in Moscow, as including “human-size figures of Porky the Pig and Marilyn Monroe.”
You see the problem, right? No? Well, here is the next day’s correction: “An earlier version of this article misstated the name of a cartoon character. He is Porky Pig, not Porky the Pig.”
The truth about corrections like this is that they are more maddening than amusing. They suggest a level of punctiliousness, even mania, for accuracy that the paper does not in fact deserve, witness the rock-pelting item on the previous page. Would that the paper’s more serious blunders were as easily and readily undone.
