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| The Best Journalist can Confuse Adjectives. |
"One of the mixed blessings I found in my first year of anchoring The National was the number of invitations to judge things, everything from beauty contests to hog-calling competitions. One such affair, which included both plus a number of other events, was the annual Binder Twine Festival in Kleinberg, Ont., just outside Toronto. The emcee was the Squire of Kleinberg, Pierre Berton, dressed like a top-hatted circus ringmaster. Cartoonist Ben Wicks, an old friend, my wife Lorraine, and I did satisfactorily in judging the hog-calling, the milking, the dancing, and the nail-hammering, but we ran into an arithmetic problem with the beauty contest. The problem, frankly, was Ben. He'd mixed up the scoring, giving low marks to the best and high marks to the least best, the reverse of what it should have been. Our numbers were added up and when Berton announced our choice as the winner, we were all as astonished as Pierre and the audience. Boos and cat-calls greeted our apparent selection, but she gamely came forward and accepted the honours. The verbal abuse and protest at the judges continued interminably, while we puzzled over what had happened and finally discovered Ben's error. In momentary panic, confusion, and embarrassment, it was decided to award two first prizes, one to the real winner and the other to the unfortunate lady we had mistakenly announced. Neither Ben nor Lorraine and I have ever been invited back.
~ Knowlton Nash, journalist, foreign news correspondent, TV anchor, author.
Prime Time at Ten, Behind-the-Camera Battles of Canadian TV Journalism.
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