Animal Planet presents 'Jockeys' Feb. 6

DebbieFeb 21st, 2009 - 03:56:04

I'm astonished at the use of the adjective 'infamous' to describe Seabiscuit, who was as close to beloved as it is possible for a horse to be during his career and who re-gained his fame all over again with the publication of Laura Hillenbrand's Seabiscuit in 2000. Seabiscuit was infamous in neither behavior nor reputation and was considerably less fractious than his most famous rival, War Admiral.

Perhaps the writer of this article is unaware of it, but an entire book of fan letters written to Seabiscuit (yes, to the horse himself, though some were addressed to his owners too) has been published. Infamous horses don't engender that kind of devotion from fans--and many of Seabiscuit's fans were specifically his fans, not avid fans of the sport in general. Nor do their homes become tourist attractions, as Seabiscuit's has.

Infamous has negative connotations. They didn't put up a statue of Seabiscuit at Santa Anita because he was a mean-tempered, disreputable thoroughbred. Try to be more careful of how you choose your words.

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SelenaMay 11th, 2009 - 21:34:10

Like Debbie in the comment above, I, too, was disturbed and puzzled by the use of the adjective 'infamous' in describing the racehorse Seabiscuit. As a longtime copy editor, however, I quickly realized that most likely the writer made a common grammatical mistake and meant 'famous' rather than 'infamous.'

According to online dictionary Merriam-Webster, the word 'infamous' means 'having a reputation of the worst kind: notoriously evil.' I seriously doubt that the writer meant to describe Seabiscuit this way. Either she is an inexperienced writer or she did not take the proper care or time with this article. More importantly, this is a clear sign that Monsters and Critics is not employing a copy editor or a proofreader to review articles before they are posted, as anyone who is experienced with grammar would have caught this obvious mistake. This is a shame, and it's a strong example of why it is a bad idea for companies to try to save a few bucks this way: Just ONE bad word choice and you have completely changed the meaning of what you intended to convey.

As it stands, with that one word 'infamous,' this is an insult to all the people formerly associated with Seabiscuit: fans, owners, trainers, jockeys, etc. Monsters and Critics should fix the error in this article, add a post in the comment section here to apologize, and take steps to ensure that this type of problem doesn't happen again (i.e., hire better writers and/or copy editors or proofreaders).

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