Alessandra Stanley strikes again

[Larry Kart]

in today's NYT:

"Mr. Walton has played funny, fast-talking bad boys before, notably on short-lived series like “Bent” and “Perfect Couples.” A bit like Custer losing horses at Pickett’s Charge, Mr. Walton keeps getting sitcoms shot out from under him, only to be recast as a likable cad in the next."

Well, Custer was at Gettysburg, but he and Pickett were on opposite sides. Further, it was Union general Alexander Hays, not Custer, who "encouraged his men by riding back and forth just behind the battle line, shouting 'Hurrah! Boys, we're giving them hell!' even though two horses were shot out from under him."

Anyhow, why the heck does Stanley not only get this wrong but also even chose to mention such a thing in the first place? It's not like that aspect of the battle of Gettysburg rests prominently enough in the public consciousness in 2014 for it to be shoehorned into a review of a new sitcom.

[Big Beat Steve]

Well, this particular example is so very US-specific in every respect of the persons, media and historical background involved that I don't think anybody outside the US can really relate or judge - but ...

... the basic underlying problem is one that occurs everywhere in the media (here too):

IMHO it is a matter of scribes showing off with half-baked, half-researched, half-understood half-knowledge splurted out just in an attempt to show off and impress a notion of "backgrund knowledge" on their public, based on the (unfortunately often correct) assumption that the vast majority of their public will know even less and just marvel at this hint at something else to maybe know or have heard of out there ("yeah, Custer, him ..." in your case) whereas the tiny minority of those actually know better and can and will call their bluff can be shrugged or laughed off as being "nitpicking", "irrelevant because nobody will care to know THAT exactly" (or whatever ...).

"YOU DON'T HAVE TO MAKE SENSE AS LONG AS IT SOUNDS GOOD"