Wednesday, March 22, 2006
BAAHAAAAAHAAAA
Human Error
I'm a firm believer in "human error." It's one of the building blocks of civilization as we know it. Without it, things might run smoothly with the exception of natural disasters and the occasional pet stain. And how boring would that be. You think I'm kidding, but I'm not.
What's more, good things come out of mistakes. Chocolate chip cookies. The Post-It Note. And hard-won, first-hand experience to name just a few.
St. Louis Radio Host Is Fired for Uttering Racial Epithet While Praising Rice
03-22-2006 3:24 PM
By CHERYL WITTENAUER, Associated Press Writer
ST. LOUIS -- A St. Louis radio station quickly fired a talk show host for uttering a racial epithet as he talked about Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on his morning show Wednesday.
Dave Lenihan apologized on the air immediately after making what he said was a slip of the tongue. KTRS president and general manager Tim Dorsey agreed the remark was accidental but said it was nonetheless "unacceptable, reprehensible and unforgivable."
Lenihan had been heaping praise on Rice, who has frequently said she aspires to run the NFL one day but has more recently ruled out seeking to replace retiring Commissioner Paul Tagliabue.
"She's been chancellor of Stanford," Lenihan said on the air. "She's got the patent resume of somebody that has serious skill. She loves football. She's African-American, which would kind of be a big coon. A big coon. Oh my God. I am totally, totally, totally, totally, totally sorry for that."
He said he had meant to say "coup" instead of the racial slur.
KTRS listeners soon began calling the station to complain. Twenty minutes after the utterance, Dorsey went on the air to apologize to Rice and KTRS listeners.
"There can be no excuse for what was said," Dorsey said. "Dave Lenihan has been let go. ... There is enough hate. We certainly are not going to fan those flames."
NAACP chapter president Harold Crumpton commended Dorsey for his swift action.
Reached at home, Lenihan said he was still trying to figure out what happened and was drafting a letter of apology to Rice. He said he never uses the slur he uttered and thinks Rice is "a fantastic woman."
Lenihan, formerly a drive-time host at WGNU radio in St. Louis, had been at KTRS for less than two weeks.
"It was my dream job," he said. "Ratings were going well. It kind of stinks."
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Source: American Psychological Society
December 14, 2004
Slip Of The Tongue:
Word Substitution Mistakes Have More To Do With
Why is it that we can look at something, know what it is and still call a rose by a different name? Breaking from conventional wisdom, new research suggests that it isn't a rushed pace or distraction that makes us slip up, but rather a hiccup in how we plan what we're going to say that messes things up.
People usually look at things before they name them. For instance, before they say "a hammer," they look at the hammer for a second. But what about when they see a hammer and unintentionally call it "an axe"? Zenzi M. Griffin, Georgia Institute of Technology, assumed people made the mistake when they didn't look at the hammer long enough, which could reflect rushed word preparation, forgetting to check the name they had mentally prepared against the object, or paying too much attention to other objects.
But Griffin discovered that people who say "axe" when they mean "hammer" look at the hammer just as long as they do when they say "hammer." However, they look at the hammer longer after they call it "an axe," apparently as they prepare to correct their mistake. In her study, "The Eyes Are Right When the Mouth Is Wrong," Griffin concluded that, as with a gesture, a person's gaze may accurately reflect what he intends, even if his words do not. The study will be published in the December issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the American Psychological Society.
Griffin had participants name two or three line-drawn objects or describe the actions in line-drawn scenes and measured their eye movements while they spoke. She identified 41 full or partial mistakes, indicated by participants saying something like "oops," or "no," or interrupting what they were saying.
Results showed that whether they identified the items correctly or incorrectly, the amount of time participants spent looking at the drawings beforehand was almost the same. This went against Griffin's prediction that people tend to misname objects because they don't look at them long enough.
These results have three implications: 1) word-substitution mistakes are more indicative of problems in planning speech than problems in thought or attention; 2) speech errors are not caused by a person rushing through word preparation or omitting a sub-process; and 3) looking at an object is not a guarantee that the person will say it correctly.
