Another week, another Rick Perry gaffe, this time concerning the big news item of the day, the death of Kim Jong-Il. What could Perry get so wrong about the late North Korean dictator...? His name. "In an email statement regarding the death of North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Il, Rick Perry mistakenly referred to the despot as Kim Jong the Second," reports Think Progress. (The posting on Perry's website has since been updated with the correct spelling.) We see what happened: some sans-serif news brief on his death tripped up a Perry PR person, as a upper-case I and a lower-case l next to one another can easily be mistaken for "II" -- i.e., "the Second." But Kim Jong-Il was a regular old tyrant, not a monarch, which is probably something a presidential candidate (or at least the team surrounding him) should know. But Perry has excelled at not knowing things during his presidential campaign.
A failure of type design? Or a public service by the type designer, exposing the shallowness of understanding of the candidates for high office? :)
