Oops of the Year: Let’s Go, Natinals!

Not-So-Magic School Bus

An Alexandria teacher put a five-year-old kindergartner on the wrong bus one afternoon. Dropped off in an unfamiliar neighborhood, he wandered the streets crying before older boys found him and took him to an adult, who arranged for his return.

Found Money

A Fairfax audit determined that $1 million in sales taxes from a county Target store had been routed to Alexandria because of the retailer’s confusion about where the business was located. Maryland, meanwhile, found that it had short-changed Montgomery County schools $24 million in state aid. Said Governor Martin O’Malley: “Sometimes state government makes mistakes.”

Reply All

The State Department’s e-mail server crashed when too many staffers hit “reply all” on a blank e-mail sent to all 18,000 department employees thanks to a virus. An official responded with instructions for proper use of e-mail and a note: “Please en-sure widest distribution of this message.”

Go, Teem!

The shortcomings of the Nationals—who posted baseball’s worst record and had the most fielding errors of any team—were captured in a single moment in April when players wore jerseys with the team’s name misspelled NATINALS. Not to be outdone, the Redskins sent running back Ladell Betts out for a game with BETTIS on his back—a wishful slip, perhaps, hoping that Ladell might run more like Pittsburgh great Jerome Bettis.

Fighting Words

Democrat and BET mogul Sheila Johnson crossed party lines to back Virginia Republican Bob McDonnell in the governor’s race. But her endorsement sparked the wrong kind of headlines when she made fun of Democrat Creigh Deeds’s stutter. Maybe it’s something in the family: Her ex-husband, Bob Johnson, who was working for the Hillary Clinton campaign,had to apologize when he referenced Barack Obama’s college drug use in the midst of the South Carolina primary last year.

And Dorothy Wore Silver Shoes

The online magazine Slate takes its corrections seriously, judging from this one: “In a Sept. 21 ‘Highbrow’ column, Meghan O’Rourke stated that the Munchkins live in the northern portion of Oz. They live in the east.”

More>> Capital Comment Blog | News & Politics | Party Photos