Basic arithmetic fail

An article (in Slate by Shankar Vedantam) on why propaganda is still effective begins:
Barack Hussein Obama has 18 letters in his name. That's 6+6+6, or 666. Get it?
Except that "Hussein" is 7 letters, not 6.  Surely, that was intentional and the author would get to it?  Nope.

Neither the author nor any fact-checker at Slate bothered to check this basic piece of arithmetic!
Which dovetails neatly into my theory of why propaganda persists:  innumerate media people.

1 comment:

  1. Read it again, Lak. The article said that the full name "Barack Hussein Obama" together has 18 letters, which is 6+6+6. Nowhere did it say that each individual part of Obama's full name had 6 letters.

    ReplyDelete