"Alcoholic" inserted in list of tribes

A Tribe Named Alcoholic? Closed Caption Gaffe at Code Talker Ceremony

By Vincent SchillingYesterday during the Code Talker Gold Medal Ceremony, a closed caption screen situated in full view of the entire audience displayed the word “Alcoholic” during the medal presentations to each tribe in attendance.

The press spokesman for House Speaker John Boehner, Michael Steel says the incident was a serious mistake made by the close-caption company working for the Capitol.

In an email from Steel who apologized for taking a while to respond because they had to figure out the issue, explained accordingly:

“Closed captioning services for all major congressional events are provided by a private company that has no affiliation with the House or Senate. Unfortunately, the individual transcribing today’s event apparently mis-heard the word “Choctaw.” The transcription company was given a list of the tribes before the ceremony, so this should not have happened, and we will make a full inquiry,” wrote Steel.

“Obviously, the Speaker deeply regrets this offensive error by the transcribing service.”Comment:  I gather that voice recognition software does some captioning these day. But it sounds as though a person did this captioning and made the so-called mistake.

The word "alcoholic" came in a list of tribes between "Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe" and "Choctaw Nation of Oklahoma." The audio and visual both indicate that "alcoholic" was inserted between the tribes' names for no reason. It wasn't a garbled version of a tribal name or anything else. It was an addition with no counterpart in the tribal roll call.

I'm not sure how you "accidentally" insert a word where there should be nothing. Sounds like somebody pulled a stunt to express his opinion of Indians. They don't deserve gold medals, he may have thought, because they're drunks.