Look, spelling is sometimes hard and we all blow it from time to time. But god damn, Department of Education, get your shit together. The other countries can SEE YOU.
The department, which was assumed last week by the vastly unqualified Betsy DeVos, made a tweet on Sunday morning that misspelled the name of the civil rights activist, writer, sociologist and historian W.E.B. Du Bois. Yes, mistakes happen, but when your administration is already under fire for openly reviling people of color, perhaps you want to really double check the hell out of the vowel-laden names of the prominent historical figures you’re quoting.
OR NOT, WHATEVER, WHO EVEN CARES, CLEARLY NOT THE D.O.E, AMIRITE??!!?
The error was immediately seized upon by Twitter, most notably by Chelsea Clinton, who like the rest of us can’t figure out whether to laugh or cry or scream or light ourselves on fire and roll around on the floor.
Then the department tried to apologize. I say “tried,” because then...they effed up the apology tweet. It’s since been deleted, but not before it was documented by the Washington Post:
Post updated – our deepest apologizes for the earlier typo. — US Dept of Education (@usedgov) February 12, 2017
OH COME ON. While we’re on the subject, now also seems like an appropriate moment to remember that Donald Trump thinks Frederick Douglass is a feisty young newcomer ready to take the world by storm, and not someone who has been dead since 1895.
The NAACP, which was co-founded by Du Bois in 1909, also had some thoughts on the tweet.
Someone around here is going to have to.