On "Rapefruit" and Rosa Parks "saute": Two weeks of terrible headlines

Printing that "Lil Poopy" is a 9-year-old "raper" and other egregious typos of late

Published March 6, 2013 7:54PM (EST)

   (via Bryan Graham)
(via Bryan Graham)

Typos happen to good people. Really, it's true. And as someone who occupies a room in the ever-fragile Internet writer wing of the Journalism Glass Castle, I don't make a regular habit of throwing stones at others for minor editorial oversights.

But, you know, that doesn't mean there isn't a little fun to be had with a particularly awful and amazing crop of errors circulating over the last two weeks.

Rapefruit: Good for every meal

The March 5 edition of the Mankato Free Press's food section had a very Todd Akin-esque take on the health benefits of citrus. The employee responsible for the section's page layout opted to use a citrus wedge in place of the "G" in grapefruit.

The resulting visual is jarring, to say the very least.

[caption id="attachment_132207" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="via @BryanAGraham"][/caption]

Trenton civil rights activist travels to Washington, D.C., to see Rosa Parks saute unveiled

I do not approve of the cannibalistic connotations of a Rosa Parks "saute" (which should have read "statue," mind you), so let's just imagine the Rosa Parks saute is a recipe the civil rights trailblazer made famous.

NJ.com quickly corrected the error, but it has nonetheless been captured for Internet posterity.

[caption id="attachment_132207" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="via Jim Romenesko"][/caption]

"Lil Poopy" is not a 9-year-old raper

Much as I wish it was, "Lil Poopy" is not the typo here. It is the stage name of 9-year-old Brockton, Mass., rapper Luie Rivera Jr. And while he may have stirred controversy for calling himself a "Coke boy" and posing with writhing dancers under a flutter of dollar bills, that does not make him a pint-size raper.

The New York Daily News got it right in the headline, but slandered the little fellow in the deck. Poor Poopy.

[caption id="attachment_132208" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="via Jim Romenesko"][/caption]

The New York Post: Running out the cock 

The New York Post regularly does terrible things on purpose, but this one seems like a genuine error.

In a sports summary that, after the simple omission of the letter "L," reads more like erotic fiction, the Post writes:

The two-handed heave, which instantly became a YouTube favorite... was just the tail-end of a wild play. Edney inbounded the ball with 2.9 seconds left, but his long pass was stolen by Mount Vernon's Devante Banner... Banner tossed the ball up in the air to run out the cock.


By Katie McDonough

Katie McDonough is Salon's politics writer, focusing on gender, sexuality and reproductive justice. Follow her on Twitter @kmcdonovgh or email her at kmcdonough@salon.com.

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