Scratch

Here you will find older scratches, musings and other detritus that once were located on the front pages, but have now faded.

Filed away here to collect dust and cobwwwebs in perpetuity, links may break, facts may change and data may corrupt.

On occasion I may come down here to tidy, but for the most, I prefer to leave the past where it lies.

 

Dan Quayle & the Potatoe Incident

Some time after Dan Quayle's embarrassing spelling bee incident (in which he incorrectly advised a contestant that 'potato' was spelt with a trailing e), he addressed his critics:

"I should have caught the mistake on that spelling bee card," he admitted. "But as Mark Twain once said, 'You should never trust a man who has only one way to spell a word.'"

Quayle, it was later pointed out, had in fact been quoting President Andrew Jackson...

"I should have remembered that was Andrew Jackson who said that," Quayle declared some time later, "since he got his nickname 'Stonewall' by vetoing bills passed by Congress."

Ironically, Quayle was wrong once again, having confused Andrew Jackson with Confederate General Thomas J. 'Stonewall' Jackson - who had acquired his nickname at the first Battle of Bull Run.

["George W. Bush's Secret Service name is 'Tumbler,'" Conan O'Brien once declared. "That's because 'Bumbler' was already taken by Dan Quayle."]

14 Apr 2004 14:51 | (0) comments | Humour

Related Entries

By Date

Monthly Archive for April 2004

Previous entry: « Dance Theatre of Harlem 2

Next entry: » Yippee

By Category

Category Index: Humour

Previous entry: « Royal Mail (2)

Next entry: » Pa$$word$

By MySQL

• The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The Night time
• Passenger Incident