Um

WSJ's Washington Wire on the Barack Obama's on-again, off-again lapel pin, which is somehow a campaign issue [emphasis mine]:

The pin also comes as Obama focuses on attacking likely Republican nominee John McCain, a Vietnam veteran and former prisoner of war who wears his patriotism on his sleave (and his lapel).

Um ...

Do AP cameras have some sort of lapel-pin-removing filter that I don't know about? No, that can't be it, even McCain does wear a lapel pin in web ads his own campaign produces:

If the press can't report properly on even trumped up pointless issues, what good is it?

Comments

[jfaberrit]

I would have asked "What's a sleave?", and picked on the WSJ's lousy spell check, but lo and behold:

sleave
n. Archaic
A fine thread or skein of thread.
[From Middle English *sleven, to disentangle, from Old English *slfan, to cut, from slf, past tense of slfan, to split.]

Who knew?

[Trevor J]

Well that makes sense. If McCain's lapel pin is on a small thread, no wonder cameras can't pick it up. It's very tiny. He's such a maverick, so humble.

[Stephen]

jfaberrit,

They use the archaic form of the word because McCain's the one who first used it.