Egg on the face
The Prime Minister and a small paper in British Columbia had a lot of face wiping to do

I recently pleaded with fellow journalists to bring me their bloopers -- who could have guessed Prime Minister Jean Chrétien would answer my call.

That's right, one summer day in Prince Edward Island the honourable pie minister himself provided some funny fodder for the nation.

"Canada PM creamed by 'pie brigade,'" joked Reuters Canada's headline while The Ottawa Citizen took a more serious approach: "Getting creamed 'not a joke,' victims say."

The National Post and its readers particularly played up the public embarrassment. One article was headed, "PM a la mode," and another, "Humble pie." The Post's readers were perhaps the most creative, one writing, "After Wednesday, we'll have to identify the town where the incident occurred as Charlottetown, P.I.E."

Another wrote, "I can understand the Prime Minister getting himself in a jam with the Liberal party's crusty old policies. This could have turned out far worse than it did. They could have used a pound cake and inflicted serious injury. Also please note this was done in the wee hours of the morning. I hope the conservative media don't start reporting that the PM was pie-eyed before noon. As for the RCMP, what can we say...they 'always get their flan.'"

The analogies don't end there: "Cream pie on the Prime Minister's face was a welcome change from the 'egg' we normally see. Unfortunately, cream pie can be wiped off." And, "This horrific incident further illustrates the dire need for a National Pie Registry."

Morning radio stealing freshly pressed newspaper stories and passing them off as its own is nothing new -- but being proud of that infringement and going so far as to boast about it in your motto is downright illegal.

In early August, a court order was issued to WSPD-AM radio in Ohio, requiring it to properly attribute stories to The Toledo Blade and requiring disc jockey Mark Standriff to stop using the slogan, "I read the Blade so you don't have to."

Another act of serial plagiarism was busted closer to home, in north Vancouver. The North Shore Outlook, a community newspaper that suspected a rival of copying material, created a fictional slo-pitch league with four fake teams: Walkers, Trotters, Slo-Pokes and Plodders. Five days after the Outlook published results of the Tiddleycove Slo-Pitch League, sure enough the identical information appeared in the North Shore News.

The Outlook then ran a full-page spread headlined, "Imitation is the Highest Form of Flattery."

An archived blooper from Mat Lauer on the Today show: "Researchers have discovered that chocolate produces some of the same reactions in the brain as marijuana. The researchers also discovered other similarities between the two, but can't remember what they are."

A Montreal Gazette correction notice from March 1999: "Yesterday's report on the death of Camille Laurin said, incorrectly, that Laurin chose to dye his hair black with shoe polish. The intent was to say that Laurin's hair was dyed shoe-polish black. The Gazette regrets the error."

Lots of Gazette editors must've been snowed-in that month -- here's another one from a different March '99 edition: "A photo caption in yesterday's Gazette erroneously identified Paddy, the official mascot of Montreal's 175th St. Patrick's Day parade, as Onkel Hans, mascot of the Kitchener-Waterloo, Ontario, Oktoberfest. Paddy is a giant shamrock, while Onkel is a giant pumpkin. The Gazette regrets the error."

Stefan B. Walther is an Ontario-based print journalist. Share your bloopers with him and your colleagues via e-mail at stefan@opolus.com.