I know it’s nitpicky, but no one on Apollo 13 said ‘Houston, we’ve got a problem.’ From the official transcript:
55:55:20 – Swigert: “Okay, Houston, we’ve had a problem here.”
55:55:28 – Duke: “This is Houston. Say again please.”
55:55:35 – Lovell: “Houston, we’ve had a problem. We’ve had a main B bus undervolt.”
If it’s not too much to ask the Kerry staff to just spend five minutes checking things like this…c’mon guys, credibility counts.
It’s nice to see I’m not the only one who’s bothered by this misquote. (Best of luck with wedding plans, btw. You should have gone my route: propose, then get stationed in Korea for a year. I came home and everything was ready to go. Very convenient. 😉
Completely off topic….
Something going on out there in bloggo land?
Instapundit, Daily Pundit, Little Green Footballs, and Tim Blair are all off line.
Me smells a Denial of Service attack, fairly large scale one. Any news?
Drezner, Porphyrogenitus, and VodkaPundit…. all down.
It’s not just me, is it?
It’s not just you. I’m writing comments here in part ’cause I’m not able to post atm on my blog and I’m waiting for my site to come back up.
I think it’s a HostingMatters server problem. Don’t know if it’s DNS or just a regular technical interuption.
There’s an equipment move, and that might explain it. Though I wonder why their “Server Status” button is “green” then.
Ahhh. Nice to hear from you Porph, and to know I’m not nuts.
I’m getting in to some now. Yours is slow, but up, I’m glad to see.
All the blogs are back up, AFAIK…
A.L.
Yeah you are being a nitpicky, AL. If they made the mistake, consider that it’s a mistake that has been made quite often, almost to the point that it’s become a part of culture.
Here’s the phrase “Houston, we’ve had a problem” googled with 687 results and here’s “Houston, we’ve got a problem” with 2,240 results.
I’m reminded of what John Ford said when asked something to the effect (I’m paraphrasing here) “Do you print the legend or the man.” He responded the “The Legend.”
This is anal as all get out.
Ah, but, “Houston, we’ve got a problem” is not the one that actually wins the Google fight – “Houston, we have a problem” was the line from (and tagline for) the movie, and it wins by a knockout with 28,400 references. Certainly I think when most people think of that line they hear Tom Hanks intoning it, and that was what he said in the movie.
So, worse than misquoting history, they’re misquoting Hollywood, too!
And this post is meant to be serious political criticism? 🙂
You gotta be kidding.
But I am afraid you may not be.
Um, where’re the politics?
It’s a pet peeve (this misquote)…
A.L.
Didn’t Apollo 13 take place during the Nixon Administration?
Do you think this mangling of the phrase has anything to do with Nixon’s quote, “I am not a crook.”
Maybe it was, “I may be a crook, maybe.” or “If crooks existed, and I am not saying they do, I am not one.”
Let’s ask Agnew.
“consider that it’s a mistake that has been made quite often, almost to the point that it’s become a part of culture.”
Kinda like “noo-cyu-lar” for nuclear.
Cut and Run Kerry lies about his war record, so why not this too? I’m hearing rumors Vietnam Veterans are going to sue him for his anti-war activities, which the military leader of the Viet Cong said were directly responsible for the American defeat and thereby for all the dead and wounded soldiers. Hanoi Long John wanted to make this election about his war record. He got it now.
And lets not forget “One small step for man….” versus what Armstrong said he *actually* said…
Yeah, and I suppose that nobody said ‘Play it again, Sam’ in the movie Casablanca.
Can I giggle that in this post you wrote, “If it’s not to much to ask…” rather than “If it’s not too much to ask…”
Glass houses, AL. 😉
DOOOH…
A.L.
You can take Glenn Reynolds to task, too. See here:
http://www.instapundit.com/archives/014512.php
Your link to what Kerry said is dead. I guess we all make mistakes.
…yeah, but only some of us are running for President…stale link replaced.
Ann, it’s just a peeve…
A.L.
Andrew,
If you’re sufficiently picky to be actually bothered by the above (mis)quotation, I would think you would be the kind of person to realize that “quote” and “misquote” are always verbs … check any dictionary. The noun form is “quotation” and “misquotation”.
Which fact, of course, I would never have known except that I’m dating an English professor.
Now I’m all for accuracy, and agree that it is right to expect the Kerry campaign to check their facts and even to call them politely on the error. Do I think this is worthy of political mention? Hardly. Kerry’s little Apollo 13 foible doesn’t in any way change the meaning of the quotation or misrepresent any fact; the misquotation injured nobody.
Being deliberately snarky: It seems bizarre to me that this could possibly deserve the comment “c’mon guys, credibility counts” in the world of “We know where they are. They’re in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad…”.
…noun form[s] [are] …
speaking of losing credibility…
OT, Joe, how about a post on your thoughts about the Times magazine article on the Salafiyya?
I thought it was pretty interesting, and worthy of informed comment.
I don’t think the actors looked like the real astronauts, also there wasn’t any music, plus they didn’t show them going to the bathroom and the movie was only like 2 hours long but it took 3 days or more to go to the moon- jeez why doesn’t hollywood ever get anything right?