Julia Louis-Dreyfus Honored On Walk Of Fame... With A Typo

Having been an editor for a long time, I cringed when I saw this headline, and then I laughed so hard I nearly cried. I am still trying to imagine what chain of events had to happen for a mistake of this magnitude to occur. Now, I know what it's like to misspell something or not catch a typo in a presentation or memo. These things do happen, but to someone who edits for a living, these things should RARELY happen. We're all human, even editors, and no matter how many times your eyes roam over a document, there is always a remote possibility that you have missed something. This is why most editors will spend extra time going over a letter, document, advertisement, and the like if it is going to be seen by millions of people. And then, they will have an assistant look at it. Then, if possible, they will look at it again. As a former editor and mentor once told me, "There are two jobs in which you can never make a mistake: editor and umpire." Enough said.

Therefore, it is with absolute incredulity that I ponder the situation that happened with Julia Louis-Dreyfus's star on the Walk of Fame. It's not like they couldn't find out how to spell her name. It's not like they couldn't Google it and double-check themselves. Her name isn't Star Jones or Joan Rivers, which have conventional spellings. Her name has a hyphen, for goodness' sake! Holy smokes. This is either laziness at its best or pure stupidity; I'm not sure. Maybe both?

When Grace, who is 10 (11 tomorrow), was doing her report on Michelle Obama and wanted to find out Michelle's middle name, she conducted a Google search that yielded three different results (including Shaniqua, which I was secretly hoping was Michelle Obama's middle name because girlfriend could totally rock that.) So when Grace asked me which one was correct, I told her she needed to do additional research to find out which one was right, including looking up the White House website and Michelle Obama's First Lady website. Michelle Obama's full name is Michelle LaVaughn Robinson Obama. My 10-year-old figured that one out and, of course, credited her source on her paper. Why on God's green earth couldn't someone have called Julia's agent and asked to confirm his or her client's rather unusual name? Would that not fall under the realm of common sense?

Apparently, Julia thought this whole thing was hilarious and asked them to keep the misspelled star in the ground, but by then sheepish folks were apologizing and RE-CHISELING a new star. That's what gets me, too. They have to chisel in the name. It's not like you can run spell check and then backspace. You have to re-chisel a whole new piece of granite. So, in closing, may this be a lesson to all: Do not take names or spelling for granite (okay, just kidding on that one). No, seriously, find out how to spell something before setting it in stone (See what I did there? I am on a roll.) Ack!