by In the history of literature, there are many examples of writers changing the spelling of America to have an artistic effect. The spelling can be changed for reasons ranging from strong sarcasm to political commentary. Ice Cube, after all, released an album called AmeriKKKa’s Most Wanted — an astute criticism of racism in the United States. It is like how sometimes the United States is spelled with a dollar sign (United $tates) to reflect the power that money has in the United States political process.
Now we have another glorious spelling of “America” thanks to the campaign to elect Mitt Romney to the office of President of the United $tates… I mean, “States.” The Romney campaign released an app for phones that would let users take photos of themselves and use pre-generated logos to show the user’s support for the Romney campaign. There were many lovely logos and slogans from the Romney campaign including one that read, “Amercia is With Mitt!”
“Amercia “– not “America” but Amercia. It was not long before people took photos of themselves using the app and specified this particular caption as a way to poke fun at the Romney campaign. Soon there was a tumblr blog that featured the “Amercia is with Mitt” images.
This is not the campaign for which is going to be the next great flavor of ice cream — peanut butter fudge or rocky road caramel. This is the campaign to determine who is going to be the next president of the United States. Neither America nor Amercia needs a leader that cannot spell its name properly.
In case you thought that the misspelling was a one off event and that the Romney event could not possibly let any errors get by after that, there is the fantastic slideshow they showed fundraisers with information about approval ratings for various presidents at this point in the election season and yet somehow they managed to misspell the name of one of the most popular Republican presidents — Ronald Reagan. He is better known to the Romney campaign as Ronald “Regan.”
Lest you think this will be a completely Romney error filled article, rest assured that I am well aware that it was about this point during the Obama campaign four years ago that the now President claimed to have visited all fifty-seven states during his campaigning. How I envy the residents of those extra states, who get to live under the radar since they don’t even exist.
This is a pretty sad commentary on what we expect — but really get — out of the presidential election process.
Indeed it is. Makes you wonder if presidential campaigns will ever get more respectful.