The always reliable Deborah Solomon interviewed folk singer and activist Arlo Guthrie in this weekend’s New York Times Magazine.  The one (very long) hit wonder and son of Woody Guthrie  made some noteworthy observations.  (Has there ever been an interview with Arlo that didn’t mention his legendary father?  The man’s dead more than 40 years.)

Goaded by Solomon into an unnecessary defense of Woodstock, Guthrie said, “We’re still talking about it.  How many other events from 1969 are we still talking about?” Gee, I dunno, Arlo.  A week ago we celebrated the human race stepping foot on that big rock a quarter million miles away that we always look at and write goofy songs about.  That was in 1969.  The Stonewall riots in New York ushered in the gay rights movement, and Charles Manson’s followers murdered actress Sharon Tate and others in a bid to usher in a race war.  Ted Kennedy had a driving mishap on Chappaquiddick Island that got a bit of press coverage, too.

If you’re anything like me, you read the acknowledgments,  pay attention until all of the credits have rolled, and regularly check your newspaper for admissions of past errors.  The New York Times regularly posts corrections when they misspell the middle name of an article’s  photographer, or the name of the town in which an unindicted co-conspirator attended high school.

The Times demonstrated its commitment to accuracy on Saturday by printing the following:

An article in some editions on Wednesday about the disappearance, and safe return, of an elderly Manhattan woman with Alzheimer’s misstated the frequency of her son’s visits from his home in New Jersey. The son, William Zengel, visits his mother, Betty Zengel, about twice a week, not once a month.

Daphne Merkin penned an article essentially calling Bernie Madoff’s victims saps – without mentioning that her brother was implicated in the scandal for allegedly defrauding investors of over $2 billion that he funneled Madoff’s way.  The Times dithered over whether to clarify her obvious conflict of interest.  Times editors were aware of the egregiously high error rate  in Jayson Blair’s articles for more than 3 years before his plagiarism and fabrications finally brought him down.

But the Times will not let stand the implication that a boy doesn’t love his mama.

Image via blog.pentagram.com.

You know how you’re sometimes just toddling through life, forgetting about doing the dishes and talking to any domesticated animals you may have wandering up to your desk meowing for exotic foods you don’t have and then someone sends you an email and at the end of the email there’s like an innocuous little link saying “hey have you seen this” and then you click it and RAGE RAGE RAGE TAKES OVER YOUR BODY AND SOUL AND THE “CONDITIONING” YOU “EXPERIENCED” DURING YOUR “STAY” AT THE “SPECIAL PLACE YOUR FAMILY DOESN’T REFER TO IN POLITE CIRCLES” is gone and you want to punch, say, the entire continent of America in it’s stupid tits for being stupid AND I MEAN STUPID BEYOND ALL PREVIOUS EXAMPLES OF STUPIDITY OF WHICH AMERICA HAS A FEW, LET’S FACE IT because now it’s personal?

You know that feeling? Right?