Rick Santorum fails to hit a Homer

I know there's a big game on, but I need to talk about something else. (And it's pretty obvious to me who will win. It's going to be the Denver Brocnos, proving once and for all the miraculous powers contained in the prayers of a devout athlete.) But to the matter at hand...

Rick Santorum, in a recent doomsday speech at a university, said, "Go back and read what the sirens did once you arrived on that island. They devour you. They destroy you. They consume you."

Any fifth grader, any college student who halfway paid attention while reading Homer, and (I'd like to hope) many of the folks who read this blog, would blink or frown in puzzlement at this statement. Devour? No way. The Sirens lured sailors to their island. Depending on which source you go to, the sailors either stayed on the island for the rest of their lives or perished in the attempt to get there. Where the heck did Santorum get the idea they devoured anyone? I especially love that he began with, "Go back and read..." Good advice, twit. Oh, and here's another tricky little thought that might contain too much logic for Santorum and his ilk. If you believe in any form of the Apocalypse as described in Revelation, then you can't also believe that man will destroy the world. You can't end something twice. But that's another matter.

Now, as much as it's pleasant to make fun of him and his ridiculous ideas, there's a deeper problem here. The media should have been all over it. It has all the elements for a perfect story. (Especially given the "go back and read" part and the fact that he said it at a university and nobody corrected him.) But the story of this error received almost no coverage, as far as I can see. I'm just hoping this doesn't mean we have a generation of underschooled reporters following around a generation of badly educated candidates. Let's hope it just means all the smartest reporters have already stopped listening to Santorum. (Guess what, Rick? You're candidacy is living in the end times.)

Okay -- back to the nachos.