{"id":22192,"date":"2012-06-01T07:00:24","date_gmt":"2012-06-01T12:00:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.christandpopculture.com\/?p=22192"},"modified":"2012-06-01T07:00:24","modified_gmt":"2012-06-01T12:00:24","slug":"not-fit-for-dinner-a-better-amercia-with-mitt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/christandpopculture\/2012\/06\/not-fit-for-dinner-a-better-amercia-with-mitt\/","title":{"rendered":"Not Fit for Dinner: A Better Amercia With Mitt"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Each Friday in Not Fit for Dinner<\/a>, C. Ryan Knight explores political issues and the preconceptions guiding our understanding of and responses to them.<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Two weeks ago in my column Placing #ObamaInHistory<\/a>, I sought to dismiss exaggerated criticism of the president over modifications to the White House presidential biographies. This week, a technological blooper\u2014the misspelling of America<\/a>\u00a0in the \u201cWith Mitt\u201d iPhone campaign app by Mitt Romney\u2019s campaign staff\u2014compels me, for the present, to defend Romney.<\/p>\n

The misspelled message \u201cA Better Amercia\u201d appeared alongside other correctly spelled campaign phrases<\/a>\u00a0like \u201cWe\u2019re with Mitt\u201d and \u201cAmerican greatness.\u201d Romney\u2019s campaign staff quickly fixed the typo, though Romney continues to get grief over the mistake: memes<\/a>\u00a0designed as campaign posters, a Tumblr account<\/a>, and scores of tweets with the hash-tag #amercia. Stephen Colbert suggested<\/a>\u00a0this would work out in Romney\u2019s favor when China tries to but cannot collect debt from a country (America) that no longer exists\u2014and can\u2019t forward the bill to the new country (\u201cAmercia\u201d) that replaced its predecessor.<\/p>\n

The mistake is properly viewed<\/a>\u00a0as a \u201creminder to double-check your work,\u201d but far too much could easily be read into the Romney campaign\u2019s blunder. We could, for instance, potentially draw some of the following hypothetical conclusions from the mistake:<\/p>\n