Harper & Co.: A Bunch of Dirty Bums

By Baxter

Here's a little comfort for every political staffer who has ever made an embarrassing mistake in print. Say, for example, leaving the letter "l" out of the word "public."

Stephen Harper's office has topped you.

The Canadian Prime Minister, heading out on a five-day tour of the Arctic, issued a news release with a tiny but significant misspelling of the capital of his country's newest province, Nunavut.

See, add an extra "u" to "Iqaluit" and you get a word in the Inuktitut language for people who, um, don't wipe themselves very well.

“Hopefully this unfortunate typo, which we have corrected, will inform the greater public that there is no [extra] ‘u' in Iqaluit,” said PMO spokesman Dimitri Soudas.

Well, we cats — known to be fastidious for keeping ourselves clean — hope that Mr. Soudas will not issue a follow-up press release using the term "greater public." Could be dangerous.

But will we forgive his incorrect use of the adverb "hopefully"? Maybe not.