posted January 21, 2009 05:01 PM by
TomAs someone who nitpicks over spelling, grammar, and the like, I couldn't help but notice a glaring factual error in
Barack Obama's Inaugural Address yesterday:
Forty-four Americans have now taken the presidential oath.
As phrased, that's not really correct. Grover Cleveland, having served two non-consecutive terms in office, is counted twice as the 22nd and the 24th president, so in fact only 43 Americans have taken the presidential oath, not 44 as Obama stated. Now, I'm not a speech writer, but it's been suggested to me that they might have used the incorrect figure on purpose to avoid confusion. The whole situation could have been easily avoided, however, if they simply used the passive voice, but years of English classes have made writers terrified to use this construction:
The presidential oath has now been taken forty-four times.
It gets the point across and it's perfectly acceptable grammatically, though it does have a little less flare than the first quote.
Grammar aside, I think the only reason this error stood out to me is because the cable news networks were chatting back and forth with mindless banter for hours before the actual ceremony. They happened to repeat this factoid about a dozen times, along with other useless tidbits of information, like the Bush family's Secret Service code names (a full list can be found
here if you're really interested).
Even with this tiny factual error, Obama's public speaking skills (and, arguably, fact-checking skills) are far better than those of his predecessor.
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