‘We regret the error. Now live long, and prosper.’
Geoff Boucher of the Los Angeles Times — who blogs about scifi, comics and the other geekazoid stuff that really floats my boat — posted a really funny one today.
This is an LAT archive photo published in January 1968 that shows Cal Tech students protesting in front of NBC studios in Burbank. The occasion was the reported impending cancellation of Star Trek — which, at the time, would have been in its second season on NBC.
So what’s so funny? Boucher reports:
It’s great checking out the clothes and placard messages, but I groaned when I read the caption that appeared in the paper with the photo. One line of the caption made it painfully clear that photographer Harry Chase and the copy desk editors of 1968 were not exactly big ‘Star Trek” fans: “Signs for and against Dr. Benjamin Spock appear amid the other protesting possible canceling of Star-Trek television series as ‘totally illogical.’”
Hmmmm. I just guessing here, but I don’t think that “Draft Spock” sign is actually a reference to Dr. Spock, the famed pediatrician, author and political activist.
We wonder if the Times ever ran a correction.
Find Boucher’s blog here.
October 24th, 2008 at 9:40 am
Wasn’t it also “Mr. Spock,” not doctor?
October 24th, 2008 at 8:42 pm
Yup. It was McCoy who was a doctor, not a tailor.
October 27th, 2008 at 11:42 am
Mmmm, Star TRek……I’m going to go watch DS9
October 28th, 2008 at 1:41 pm
And check out the NBC snake logo in the background. Until the 1980s peacock, their only consistent identity was the chimes!
There’s a lesson in that somewhere for people who want to diddle with newspaper nameplates….