Tuesday, May 5, 2009

White House Press Office Stubs Toe on Joe, Calls VP 'Joe Buden'

The White House Press Office is still having trouble getting things right.

After stumbling out of the gate, the White House has once again botched a press release, this time in regards to Vice President Joe Biden, as Jimmy Orr of The Christian Science Monitor notes in this posting:
Hey, Vice President Biden isn’t the only one who can make a mistake. His press office yesterday showed it is equally as capable.

Usually his press people have to send out a statement clarifying what the vice president meant. On Monday, they had to send out an email clarifying what they meant.

But it was only a minor mistake. Like the city where the vice president was going. And the vice president’s name.

Subject

“Vice President Buden Kicks Off $32 Million Renovation and Restoration of Wilimington Train Station,” reads the subject line.

Bringing back memories of last week when a corrective email was issued following Biden’s disastrous appearance on the Today Show, his flacks quickly hit the re-send button correcting the mistakes.

After all, they know it’s Vice President Biden and not Buden.

Progress

But let’s not be negative about this. That would be petty.

It’s important to recognize progress. After all, these guys are getting better at this. The whole staff is.

Last week, it took six hours before the White House sent a statement out clarifying why Air Force One was involved in a photo op that panicked New York City.

By Thursday, it only took 90 minutes for the vice president’s office to issue a statement clarifying that Biden did not want people holing up in caves.

Yesterday? The clarifying statement was sent out in just four minutes.

The thing is, I typo all the time. But this blog is a one-man show. I have no editor backing me up. I catch what I can and make corrections as I go along. But the White House press office should be an elite operation, where multiple people look at releases before they are made public. Certainly misspelling Wilmington isn't a big deal, but Buden? They're lucky they didn't insert the letter "r."

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