It seems one, at least, of our news networks is so uneducated, ill-informed and grammatically backward that it can't find (or can't be bothered to hire) literate editors. Courtesy of Divemedic, we find this:
Had they never heard of "Molotov cocktails"? Are they historically as well as linguistically illiterate? (Or, as Divemedic suggests, they may have been reporting on Jewish riots!)
Ye Gods and little fishes . . .
Peter
Peter,I am shocked! I thought everyone knew about mazel tov cocktails. Originated by Hezbollah in the first Intifada, they are gasoline in a Mogen David bottle with a flaming slab of matzah as the igniter. Sometimes effective against IDF vehicles.
ReplyDeleteActually the Mazel Tov cocktail is a beverage imbibed by the Mossad at the conclusion of a successful mission.
ReplyDeleteWhoever the responsible staffer at Abecedarian News might be, he or she a) holds a university degree and b) has not yet paid for it.
ReplyDelete.
Those Mazel tov cocktails, are they French Champaign or California Sparkling wine?
ReplyDeleteI have made and tried manay a cocktail, and am willing to try more with a precious few exceptions. I hope I NEVER have cause to prepare a Molotov cocktail. With sufficient detail, I *might* be willing to try a Mazel Tov cocktail... despite, shall we say, some (hopefully) minor religious differences.
ReplyDeleteI first saw this malapropism about 10 years ago, and did some research.
ReplyDeleteI found a recipe for a cocktail known as Mazel Tov, and I ran out and bought the ingredients.
I wouldn't recommend it, unless you actually LIKE Manischewitz wine. (Blechh).
I have since learned there are other recipes under that name. They may be less repugnant.
I don't think this is abysmal ignorance--what probably happened is someone's Autocorrupt changed "Molotov" to "Mazel Tov" and no one caught the error because they were in a hurry.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, that doesn't say much for the station's QA process, which is just as worrisome.
You'll note the chyron said "Trying to use Mazel Tov Cocktail to burn up Police".
ReplyDeleteTrying implies failing.
Why did they fail? Because they didn't know how to properly prepare a Mazel Tov cocktail -
They didn't snip the tip
That looks like a close captioning error. On non scripted shows that have to be captioned in real time you see a lot of errors like this. On YouTube the auto captioning will frequently interpret gunshots as ‘applause’.
ReplyDeleteYeah, auto captioning is as likely to blame as some idiot, who know's where in the world, doing instant manual captioning.
ReplyDeleteWhen I saw it the first thing I thought was: "Autocorrect is *NOT* your friend."
ReplyDelete