"A Little Urbanity" Making National News!

Sort of . . .

Last week I posted a humorous complaint about a Wall Street Journal column in which Cynthia Crossen confused Roman coins (called asses in Latin) with donkeys. It was an easy mistake to make, and I probably shouldn't have been so sniffy about it.

But Ed Cone picked it up, and we both e-mailed Crossen, who replied to me, joining in the fun: "I made an ass of myself," she wrote.

Today, the Journal ran a correction:

IN ANCIENT ROME, asses were a kind of coin used as currency. Wednesday's Deja Vu column erroneously said that Roman sumptuary laws limited the number of animals, including donkeys, that could be spent at festivals and parties.

Now John Hillen at The Corner, which is the lively, in-house group blog of National Review Online, is curious:

Now, who or what could have prompted that correction? It must be a coded message to a sleeper cell of supply siders in Univ. of Chicago's economics department or something.

Nope; it's just some pedantic nit-picking by a small-town classics geek blogger.

Ah, fame.

Hat tip to Laurette, who spotted the Corner post.