Now I’ve Heard It All

This funny incident happened because of the death of a president. When I couldn’t get the Grand Rapids funeral for President Gerald Ford on Fox News, I tried CNN, only to find a female anchor telling us what we had just heard while we missed the next speaker’s speech. I ended up with C-SPAN, which I should have chosen in the first place, for it has the good taste not to offend the viewers’ intelligence by unwanted interpretation. When the camera showed the outside of the Episcopal cathedral where the service occurred, a regular announcer on C-SPAN did talk a little, but he was not interfering with the airing of the service. Perhaps he should have kept quiet, however, for when he reiterated what had happened during the past few days, I caught his horrendous mistake, one that must have shocked all lexicographers of the English language who happened to be listening at the time.

Many people, if not most, have trouble with correct use of the verbs to lie and to lay, and this man might have thought he’d figured out a way to settle the case once and for all. Instead of saying the body “lay in repose,” (in past days) which he must have thought wrong in the first place, he created his own version and not once, but twice, said, the body “lied in repose.” This must have produced copious mail at C-SPAN’s headquarters, enough that I didn’t need to write to them, but I can almost guarantee this anchor will most likely never make that mistake again.

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