Dream job

Matthew Hoy
By Matthew Hoy on March 30, 2004

I'm not talking about the ESPN show of the same name. Nope, I'm talking about my dream job -- getting paid for doing this. Writing about what I want. Maybe publishing two columns a week for a major newspaper. I hope that this is training for that eventual day.

That being said, when your job is to write two columns a week, you'd think that there woudl be plenty of time to broaden your mind, learn a little about American history, check your facts.

Boston Globe columnist Ellen Goodman's latest piece is a case study in what can happen when you have someone who would be lauged at on "Street Smarts" writing columns.

Justice Sandra Day O'Connor said, "there are so many references to God in the daily lives of this country" that the words in the pledge have no more religious meaning than the words on the coin. Maybe so. But remember that adding "In God We Trust" was also a political sop to opponents after Lincoln rejected their proposal to insert Jesus Christ into the preamble of the Constitution.

Heck, it would've been easier if Lincoln could've convinced the other representatives at the Constitutional Convention to do away with those slavery clauses -- then he wouldn't have had to be president more than 70 years later when the Civil War was fought.

Where was the copy editor?

How exactly do you explain this in a correction? "Our columnist couldn't pass a junior high American history class. We apologize for the error."

*UPDATE* Tuesday's "Best of the Web Today" (scroll down about 3/4 of the way) notes that there was an effort to have the preamble amended.

However, Goodman still needs some editing, because, as I've mentioned before, the President has no role in the process for amending the Constitution. Therefore Lincoln couldn't have "rejected" their proposal.

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