An Elderly Couple’s Defiant Stand Against Armed* Robber

ST. CHARLES, Minn. (WCCO) — A 91-year-old Minnesota man and his 82-year-old wife say they weren’t scared, but the guy trying to rob them sure was.

A masked intruder wanting money barged into Wally and Betty’s apartment in St. Charles over the weekend. However, he got something in return.

*With a shovel

OK,

1. Two clichés in a row. First, “X wasn’t Y, but Z sure was [Y].” Fine. Then a functionally identical cliché, re-teasing us about the idea that the robbery didn’t go as planned; and, given the headline, is there really any need for two cute insinuations? We know how this story ends.
2. The second cliché isn’t even the right cliché. The whole point of a robbery is to “get” something (in “return” for robbing people?). So let’s assume the writer meant: “However, he got something he wasn’t bargaining for.” Which itself—even being the correct cliché!—doesn’t quite apply here, because really in the end the burglar got nothing. Neither the hoped-for loot nor one right in the kisser. Just mild cantankerousness from old people.

Oh, yes! More!

They both resisted. It happens to be in Wally’s blood. The World War 2 veteran wasn’t about to give in to the guy’s demands — his wife wasn’t either.

3. I believe we’re talking about an acquired trait, not an inherited one. Or maybe Old Man Feistiness is like the original Gulf War Syndrome—acquired, but then heritable, and maybe in the blood?

  • Argh! You damn WCCO NEWS 4 kids and your dadgum illiteracy!

    • If you watch the video (contains great old-timey crotchety talk!), you’ll notice that (as is often the case with local teeveenewz sites) the article is more or less a transcription of the anchors’ broadcast narration. Bafflingly, though, the written version, rather than having been cleaned up, somehow got even stupider than the just-average-stupid broadcast version (which must be rare for local teeveenewz).

    (Sloggers: If any of you are insane like me and have a how-dare-you-be-wrong-on-the-internets fit every time you see news writing like this, send me your links! I will pour into a single compilation post all the biliousness and pettiness I can muster. And I can muster plenty! On which note, I can tell I’m really losing my marbles today, because I desperately want the video caption hyphenated [“attempted-robbery victim”] or else recast as “victim of attempted robbery,” even though obviously nobody is going to think this sneaky old bugger tried and somehow failed to be the victim of a robbery. AAAAAAAAA!!!!!)

    8 replies on “Today in Mangled News Copy”

    3. Aw come on, this is a cute story.

      And it sounds like it could have come from St. Olaf, Golden Girl Rose’s hometown. You have seen “The Golden Girls”, haven’t you?

      But I hear ya. I have my list of peeves: ‘co-ed’ (GAH!), ‘all of the sudden’ (GAH!), getting ‘than’ and ‘then’ confused (GAH! GAH!!), ‘for all intensive purposes’, ‘per batim’, etc etc etc (GAH! GAH!! GAAHHH!!!).

    4. OK, not quite in the same category, but I was just thinking yesterday that misspellings and grammatical errors seemed to be requirements for printed versions of teevee news stories.

      This is an actual quote from KING 5 dot com from yesterday:

      …families say recently security helicopters are flying to close to their homes and agents are showing up on their property unannounced.
      “I understand they have a job to do but its rather intrusive and dis concerning,” Reimer says.
      http://www.king5.com/home/Border-familie…

    5. You’re going to compile all the weak puns and insipid transitions from local TV newscasts? And the poorly transcribed text on their web sites?

      Yeah, that’s news .

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