Remember all those blacks who fought for the Confederacy? You know, those enslaved Americans who enlisted by the thousands to win the South's independence and preserve their own bondage?
Well, okay, they didn't. But don't worry — the error-riddled textbook that asserted this fantasy has allegedly been fixed.
After a flurry of embarrassment (but not nearly enough, in our opinion), the Virginia Board of Education has blessed a corrected version of Our Virginia that soon will be headed for the Commonwealth's classrooms.
We cats say, hm. We realize that we're curmudgeons when it comes to factual, typographical and grammatical errors, but somehow we have the feeling that if we picked up a "corrected" copy of this book today, we'd still find plenty of goofs to complain about. An earlier reference to the United States "Navel" Academy comes to mind.
On the other hand, how much worse can it be than what we encounter elsewhere every day? We've just about given up on "lie" and "lay," which are routinely abused by everyone from NPR business correspondents to healthcare workers. And POLITICO, which frequently appears to be operating editor-free, doesn't know the difference between "stationary" and "stationery."
Sigh. Sometimes there's no fixing the world. We know that just from the errors and falsehoods that the Republican Presidential candidates committed last night.
Nevertheless, we cats reserve the right to HISS.
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