
Surprised they didn't carve him with a baton.
And that was just for newsprint. If we’d known those words were going to be carved in granite, we’d have held the story for a day and made damned sure they were the right ones. A glance at Dr. Martin Luther King’s original words and what ended up on his monument proves why this is sound policy.
But the thing that bothers me most about this is why they went with the “drum major” quote at all. King was a gifted orator, and he said a lot better things than that in his short career. Any single sentence in his “I have a dream” speech would have been more inspirational. The image of a prancing drum major might work well with a Richard Simmons memorial — MLK not so much.
But there it is on the monument, awkward paraphrase and all. You just have to shake your head. That’s what I do when I see expensive signage with misspelled words. You can shell out thousands for the sign itself, but can’t part with a few bucks for a dictionary? A lot of copy editors are out of work these days, but I think it’s too soon to say that their skills are obsolete.