IS HE A BILINGUAL, OR AN ALIEN NO ONE UNDERSTANDS?

By Juan Montoya
Everyone does it.
Sooner or later if you're into a journalism gig, something will slip by and readers are left wondering whether anyone is minding the store.
Sometimes it's done purposely, as in the case when Pat Lehmann ran against Jackie Lockett and she beat him by 69 votes in the early 1990s. The headline in the El Bravo's English Valle Section read: "Lockett Licks Lehmann with 69."
No one could miss the presence behind that headline since local pundit Dr. G.F. McHale-Scully and his understudy Anthony (don't cal me Tony) Gray were in cahoots running the section for the Carretero sisters Nancy and Christina.
Which bring us to the unintended errors of the trade.
If you look at the graphic accompanying this post you will notice that the headline is missing a word. The story is about an interim committee addressing human. What kind of human, the head doesn't say. But if one reads the story, it becomes abundantly clear in the text that the word "smuggling" was inadvertently left out.
It's a good thing that Texas senators Juan "Chuy" Hinojosa and Eddie Lucio Jr. – rumored to be humans themselves – are on the case. They will probably draft a bill that establishes a research center to study the best way to address humans, and then lobby Texas Gov. Rick Perry to establish a satellite office in Brownsville and an administrative and research center in McAllen.
They are, after all, human.