Wayne Allard (R-CO) Loses The First Responder Vote

[albionmoonlight]

http://coloradoconfidential.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=2156

[SackAttack]

My guess is either:

a) he's a dumbass
b) the quote wasn't something he ever said to begin with, and is just press release feel-good boilerplate that happened to have the 'tell me how you REALLY feel' bit from his staffer still in it.

b doesn't rule out a, of course, but it wouldn't surprise me a bit if the quote were completely fabricated to begin with. PR isn't held up to the same standards real journalists would be in most cases.

[albionmoonlight]

Yeah--I doubt that these Senators ever read any of the "March 10th is National Puppies and Kittens are Cute Day" press releases that they send out.

But you have to know as the staffers who send these things out to PROOFREAD before the final version is sent to the public.

[Drake]

Meh. Seems like an honest mistake to me.

[rkmsuf]

Glad to see the Senator is tackling the hard hitting issues.

[Ksyrup]

From my experience - which included wordsmithing many comments (supposedly) made for press releases - many elected officials not only don't say what they're quoted as saying, they don't even know what they've been quoted as saying until they read the press release after the fact. That's just the way it goes. Likely, Allard is completely blameless in this, and several staffers are the ones who (a) wrote that to begin with, and then (b) missed it in the final version.

Of course, the skeptic in me would probably think that Allard isn't completely blameless, in that the idea for such recognition was probably motivated by a need for cheap votes, and what better way to garner some feel-good PR then to recognize people who do that kind of stuff? But that's just politics in general, and has nothing to do with the "typo" at issue.

[sterlingice]

Ok, that's kindof funny.

SI

[JPhillips]

I've done a bunch of press releases for different performances I've done and you always proof before you send. I've never had anything this bad slip by, but typos and poor grammar will kill you if you don't take the time to proof. Most papers will simply print what they receive, so just like in carpentry, read twice, send once.