{"id":16044,"date":"2008-06-30T10:30:37","date_gmt":"2008-06-30T14:30:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/16044.html"},"modified":"2008-06-30T10:30:37","modified_gmt":"2008-06-30T14:30:37","slug":"note-to-the-religious-right-auto-replace-is-not-your-friend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/note-to-the-religious-right-auto-replace-is-not-your-friend\/","title":{"rendered":"Note to the religious right: auto-replace is not your friend"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Auto-correct can be a very helpful feature of any word-processing program. But when conservatives use it, they run the risk of embarrassing themselves.<\/p>\n<p>Some far-right sites that subscribe to the Associated Press feed, for example, will use auto-correct to change &#8220;Democratic Party&#8221; to &#8220;Democrat Party.&#8221; This, of course, is because they have the temperament of children.<\/p>\n<p>But the American Family Association&#8217;s OneNewsNow website takes the phenomenon one step further with its AP articles. The far-right fundamentalist group replaces the word &#8220;gay&#8221; in the articles with the word &#8220;homosexual.&#8221; I&#8217;m not entirely sure why, but it seems to make the AFA happy. The group is, after all, pretty far out there.<\/p>\n<p>The problem, of course, is that &#8220;gay&#8221; does not always mean what the AFA wants it to mean. My friend Kyle <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rightwingwatch.org\/2008\/06\/the_dangers_of_1.html\">reported this morning<\/a> that sprinter Tyson Gay won the 100 meters at the U.S. Olympic track and field trials over the weekend. The AFA ran the story, but only after the auto-correct had &#8220;fixed&#8221; the article.<\/p>\n<p>That means &#8212; you guessed it &#8212; the track star was renamed &#8220;Tyson Homosexual.&#8221; The headline on the piece read, &#8220;Homosexual eases into 100 final at Olympic trials.&#8221; Readers learned:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Tyson Homosexual easily won his semifinal for the 100 meters at the U.S. Olympic track and field trials and seemed to save something for the final later Sunday.<\/p>\n<p>His wind-aided 9.85 seconds was a fairly cut-and-dry performance compared to what happened a day earlier. On Saturday, Homosexual misjudged the finish in his opening heat and had to scramble to finish fourth, then in his quarterfinal a couple of hours later, ran 9.77 to break the American record that had stood since 1999. [&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>Homosexual didn&#8217;t get off to a particularly strong start in the first semifinal, but by the halfway mark he had established a comfortable lead. He slowed somewhat over the final 10 meters-nothing like the way-too-soon complete shutdown that almost cost him Saturday. Asked how he felt, Homosexual said: &#8220;A little fatigued.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Now, the AFA has since <a href=\"http:\/\/www.onenewsnow.com\/AP\/Search\/Sports\/Default.aspx?id=159442\">changed the article back<\/a> to the way it was originally written by the AP reporter, but don&#8217;t worry, Kyle <a href=\"http:\/\/www.rightwingwatch.org\/2008\/06\/the_dangers_of_1.html\">got the screen-grab<\/a> before the AFA edited the piece back.<\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s just something helpful about starting a Monday morning on a hilarious note.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Auto-correct can be a very helpful feature of any word-processing program. But when conservatives use it, they run the risk of embarrassing themselves. Some far-right sites that subscribe to the Associated Press feed, for example, will use auto-correct to change &#8220;Democratic Party&#8221; to &#8220;Democrat Party.&#8221; This, of course, is because they have the temperament of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16044","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16044","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16044"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16044\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16044"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16044"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16044"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}