It’s the last day of NaBloPoMo and it’s clear I’ve failed. I’m not really a “post daily” kind of person in a good month, and this month happens to be both “finish qualifying paper” month and “drive to Michigan for Thanksgiving and then drive back again what seems like a few days later, and is in fact less than a week later” month.
So here goes my final post of November. I was reading the Machinist column over at Salon.com¹, and came across this dialog which took place over electronic communication:
IN TOUCH: They are saying britneys pregnant and you’re the father…
JR: Its true
IN TOUCH: OK, awesome, do u think Britney will keep it? She’s already talking about it to people
JR: No clue on what she will do. She is unpredictable.
It was posted online by In Touch magazine to “prove” that their reporting re: the pregnancy status of Ms. Spears was accurate. It seems to me, however, that the “it’s true” response can in this context very felicitously be applied to the initial assertion, that is, JR could be agreeing that people are indeed saying that she’s pregnant and that he’s the father. This would have been more apparent had he followed up his remark with a phrase to clarify the scope, such as “It’s true, they are saying that.” So not that I expect high journalistic standards from a magazine like In Touch,² it does seem that there is enough room for ambiguity here to think that this might not have been the confirmation they needed to run the story…
1. Why was I reading Salon.com during “finish qualifying paper” month? you might ask, and you’d be right to.
2. Not to knock it, though — my gym has a subscription and sometimes when you’re running that third mile you don’t want to read anything more challenging than “who wore it best“. Actually that’s Us magazine, but whatever.
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