What a difference a single letter can make. Just ask the contestant on the game show “Wheel of Fortune” whose solution to the puzzle “A Streetcar Na_ed Desire” was the letter k.
Or ask New York Times reporter Adam Goldman. Yesterday Goldman responded on Twitter to a viral video by the NRA that features conservative firebrand Dana Loesch as a spokesperson.
The video, titled “Taking on the Times,” takes the paper to task for its repeated lies and distortions. The video, which follows, is worth watching in its entirety, though the portion relevant to this story doesn’t come until 3:29, when Loesch threatens to “fisk the New York Times.”
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But that’s not what Goodman heard. His tweet encapsulating what he heard has been deleted from his Twitter account, but it still remains as a screen cap in this tweet:
NYTimes reporter is unaware of the verb "fisk." He attacks @DLoesch claiming she was threatening to "fist" @NYTimes. Kinky mind. pic.twitter.com/NcLE2v7Cfn
— John/TheCitySquare (@johncitysq) August 4, 2017
Yep. A salaried employee at a newspaper that has always professed to hold itself to the highest journalistic standards is unfamiliar with a term commonly used in twenty-first century media publishing. Either that or Goldman’s mind is so in the gutter that he instinctively hears a term used to describe a perverse sexual act.
Goodman, not content to wear egg on his face just once, tried this feeble defense:
Dana Loesch claims she says "fisk" in the ad, not "fist," which is in their hashtag. 2/2
— Adam Goldman (@adamgoldmanNYT) August 4, 2017
Loesch came back with this argument-ending response:
Hi @adamgoldmanNYT , before you maliciously lied about my word choice, did you check captioning as well? pic.twitter.com/zG1QoY0fiH
— Dana Loesch (@DLoesch) August 4, 2017
