Remember this great moment from the 1992 Presidential campaign with Dan Quayle?
Naturally, Quayle’s memoirs say that he was relying on cards provided by the school for the spelling of the word “potato”. They purportedly misspelled the word as “potatoe”, and while he had an inkling that something was amiss, he decided to trust the school’s incorrect written materials. (If this is true, it explains a helluva lot about the invasion of Iraq to capture those WMDs.)
The Romney campaign is dealing with a similar gaffe. The With Mitt app, which is still available in its uncorrected form as of this writing, lets you use your iPhone to take pictures with overlays bearing pro-Mitt Romney slogans such as “Day One, Job One”, “I’m with Mitt”, “Obama isn’t working” and so on. Normally, it would get buzz from Republican-leaning voters and the usual pro-Republican sites and the sorts of people who think FOX News is real, but thanks to a traitorous typo, it’s getting a lot of buzz in places where you’d normally see Mitt mocked (this blog included).
The problem is that one of the overlays — meant to say “A Better America” — actually says “A Better Amercia“. Here’s a self portrait I took with said overlay:
That’s right, Mitt’s app has the word America — quite possibly the most important word after “God” in any God-fearing American’s lexicon — misspelled. Had the Obama campaign done this with an app, you’d be hearing calls on FOX News right now for execution for treason.
Let this be a reminder to app developers: have someone double-check the spelling on the text and graphics of your apps! The developers behind the With Mitt app have their work cut out for them to fix their rep.
As Vanity Fair reports, the app is actually quite fun in spite of its association with Mitt Romney. The slogans are so easily subverted and will provide me tons of photographic fun, which I’ll share from time to time here on the Accordion Guy blog:
The accordion: Day one, job one!
The “I’m with Mitt” word bubble offers endless comic opportunities that would make the Romney campaign soil their special Mormon underwear. I’m thinking Mexican donkey show.
5 replies on “Mitt Romney’s Dan Quayle Moment (or: The Traitorous App that Spells “America” as “Amercia”)”
“you’d be hearing calls on FOX News right now for execution for treason.”
Come now. Much more of the this orthodox liberal line and you will start writing guest articles at the Huffington Post. If Obama or his campaign misspelled America the only surprising result would be that every TV network save Fox would only cover it for 5 minutes (if that). If you can’t spell America you deserve bipartisan critique.
Chill, Thane! It’s just hyperbole in the service of humour. Or, as Arnie would say it…
(And seriously, is writing for HuffPo a bad thing?)
Yes, Joey. Yes it is, but not because of politics.
I’m all for hyperbole and I certainly support a healthy serving (baked potatoE with no butter) of humor but when one has to respond with a variation of “just kidding” then perhaps the line was not the best to use in the first place.
A truly exceptional blogger shouldn’t be using a line that could be mistaken as taken from the unoriginal liberal beat up Fox News bucket.
“Of course, that’s just my opinion, I could be wrong.” (I wish Dennis Miller didn’t already own this wrap up line because I would totally use this as my own).
And I now must say that I have used a line from the unoriginal conservative Huffington Post beat up bucket as Huffington Post is not what many folks think it is.
Time for me to shop for a new bucket as well (IMO).
I actually find this very amusing and I believe there lies some truth beyond.. Fox News is a huge garbage can that is poisoning those hard working American that might not have time to think about other than their everyday life. Mitt Romney is nothing but a money drawling ####### that wants to gain on the most hard working people that is being enslaved by capitalism!
The chiristian fundamentalists are crazy not to acknowledge the unchristian in their values. Republicans are all about each man for themselves.. How christian is that? I believe some hasn’t done their bible studies for a very long time..
Maybe Romney should start his Amercia somewhere else? Howabout Mexico? Amercia senior Romney.. (maid me laugh at least..)