Mike Fitts brought it to my attention first:
Family says supermarket wouldn’t write Summa Cum Laude on a cake due to profanity https://t.co/IHlfu6lrzH
— Mike Fitts (@MikeFittsat140) May 22, 2018
Then, to my horror, I discovered that The Washington Post was also prominently playing this deeply embarrassing South Carolina story:
South Carolina grocery censors graduation cake inscription
CHARLESTON, S.C. — A South Carolina woman isn’t happy a grocery store censored her honor graduate son’s cake, which was supposed to include the Latin phrase “Summa Cum Laude.”
Cara Koscinski told The Washington Post a cake online from Publix that was supposed to say “Congrats Jacob! Summa Cum Laude class of 2018.”
She says the online message box did not like the word “cum,” the Latin word for “with.” The computer marked it as a naughty word and substituted three hyphens….
Yeesh.
It’s not that I’m saying everyone should have at least two years of Latin the way I did (although, of course, they should). I’m saying that to be ignorant of what cum laude means indicates that not only did you not graduate with honors, but you don’t even know anybody who maintained a 3.0 or better.
Some good news: I looked back a few minutes ago, and that story was no longer being played as prominently on the Post as it had been this morning. Whew.
But here’s the bad news: THIS is now the very top story under the Post‘s National heading on my iPad app:
A short circuit unlocked cells at a South Carolina jail. Now two murder suspects are on the loose.
Two men facing trials for brutal murders managed to overpower a jail guard and escape into the trees outside a small town in South Carolina, authorities say, after a short circuit caused their cell doors to automatically open.
Tyshon Demontrea Johnson and Curtis Ray Green fled the Orangeburg Detention Center on Saturday — initially escaping with an accused carjacker from the same cell block. The third inmate has since been recaptured, but a manhunt had not found Johnson and Green by late Monday, leaving the jail’s frightened neighbors demanding to know how its systems could so utterly fail.
It was not the first time that a cell door at the 1960s-era facility released an inmate because of a malfunction: Last June, a man serving a sentence for a probation violation noticed that his door had failed to lock, according to WRDW, and he enjoyed a few hours of freedom before police caught him in an alley.
Oh, boy…
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Nobody has anything to say about THIS? Really?
Algorithm check on a word cannot distinguish between vulgar and Latin. Apparently the cake decorator at Publix has never heard the word used in the proper context. Publi(x) education on display! Okay, couldn’t resist. 🙂
Piggo piggeri sqeali gruntus. Coca cola, coca colae, coca colae, coca cocam, coca cola. Veni vedi vici. Two years of high school latin and that’s pretty much all I remember. Sorry.
But that is a great story of PC run amok.