Tuesday, February 08, 2005

You're less of a one if you spell it right

Those of us with sorta jobs that allow much time for the Internets have been enjoying the exchanges between University of Michigan Middle East expert Juan Cole and Dubya State University Spin expert Jonah Goldberg. The dispute concerns what the latter actually knows about the Middle East. God forbid that we actually link to his hated organ so we refer you instead to James Wolcott's funny summary of the dispute as it then stood, and you can go to Cole's blog from there.

We'd like to add one etymological sidenote to the debate. In today's flailing salvo, Goldberg makes the following remark:

And while my reputation in some quarters may be that of a warmongering idjit ...

The final word is a variation of 'idiot' that we had not encountered before. Which is interesting because Jonah likes to hang out at Fado and is one of the celebrities on the forthcoming National Review cruise of Britain and Ireland. So to be able to write and sound like the locals, we can help him with the spelling. It's eejit.

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