Supremely unqualified Secretary Of Education Betsy DeVos had a rocky start to her first few days on job, including protestors temporarily blocking her from entering a Washington, D.C. public school and a fruitless search for school supplies. Perhaps to help right her already sinking ship, yesterday DeVos’ Department Of Education tweeted a quote from black history icon W.E.B. Du Bois. The Washington Post points out that unfortunately, in doing so, the Department Of Education managed to misspell the NAACP co-founder’s name as DeBois.
Compounding the error, the Department Of Education (just a reminder: the institution in charge of educating our children) soon released an apology, which had a new error in it:
In further proof that no one in her department understands how Twitter works, this morning on the @usedgov Twitter feed, the “apologizes” apology has been deleted, but the original tweet with the “DeBois” misspelling remains on the page.
Well, it’s not like there’s anyone else in the current White House that DeVos could ask for help. The Hill points out that there’s also a typo on Trump’s official Library Of Congress inauguration poster:
The original page on the Library Of Congress website said that the print “captures the essence of Donald Trump‘s campaign for the presidency of the United States,” a statement that turned out to be truer than most marketing copy usually is.
The GOP then tried to remind the world that it is the party of Abraham Lincoln with this tweet for Abe’s birthday:
Only problem: Lincoln probably didn’t say this. Vox and Jake Tapper both pointed out that the pithy quote instead came from an advertisement in a 1946 book about aging.
A full day later, the misattributed quote was removed from the @GOP page.
Look, we have a solid copy desk here at The A.V. Club, but even we are not immune to the perils of typos and fact-checks. So our first inclination may be toward some sympathy for DeVos and her cohorts. But we are not the leader of the free world, or the person in charge of educating America. Someone could make a million dollars right now by developing a nationwide home-schooling system, because these geniuses at the top are going to grind us all into idiots.