Truth Be Told, Erroneous Information Stands Corrected

Somewhere between Bill Clinton’s version of his zipper problems and Parson Weems’ fable about George Washington’s confession of cherry tree-cide . . . is the new Whopper Minefield, about every jot and tittle of truth:

* That recent news release from former Vice President Dan Quayle’s Campaign America, announcing the appointment of a “publican” instead of a Republican? Rather than let another orthographic gaffe be added to the legendary “potatoe,” U.S. Newswire, the electronic public relations service that issued the release, confessed that the spelling error was its doing, not Quayle’s.

* Rep. David Dreier (R-San Dimas) made sure by fax from Washington and by telephone from an airport in Hawaii to express his “deep regret” that his staff had misinformed The Times when, in fact, on his high school football team, he had played (drum roll) . . . center, and not quarterback.

And with Rep. Mary Bono (R-Palm Springs) asking Judiciary Committee witnesses what they tell their children about Clinton’s evasions, perhaps we will also learn:

--whether members will be subject to reprimand for bandying about the terms “Xerox” and “Xeroxing” when the ad clearly states that “it’s illegal to call a copy a Xerox”;

--and whether any member has ever told his or her children that there is a Santa Claus.

*

Stamp out Millions of dollars in gold were taken out of California’s mountains and streams in the Gold Rush, and next year, a 33-cent stamp will be issued for its 150th anniversary.

The new stamp, of four white men at a Gold Country river, is “both inaccurate history and a flagrant defiance of . . . diversity” of Gold Rush California, says state librarian and echt California historian Kevin Starr.

In a letter to the postmaster general, Starr, who also heads California’s sesquicentennial commission for the Gold Rush and statehood, says the stamp ignores the free black Americans, the Chinese and the Latinos who flocked to the gold fields, the native Americans who were already working them and upon whom the Gold Rush would have ruinous impact, and even the “small but dynamic group of women.” What should he say to these groups, Starr asks, “when they ask me why they have been totally eliminated from the Gold Rush stamp?”

Gary Kurutz, the state library’s curator of special collections, and an expert on Gold Rush writings and California iconography, said he was sent versions of the stamp in its three-year development process. Beyond his warnings, like Starr’s, that the stamp should bear an accurate racial mix, he pointed out errors not quite as bad as putting Ray-Bans on the Stuart portrait of George Washington, but almost.

Early versions had miners in movie-stereotype beards and clothes. The equipment was wrong, and the mules laden with “packages like Martha Stewart would have laid them on, they were so perfect.” Kurutz helpfully sent copies of daguerreotypes of miners and mining camps, and then “essentially never heard from them again.”

A Postal Service spokeswoman said lengthy research and development went into the stamp, and that it is “historically accurate and representative of larger California.”

The response from the postmaster general himself is in the mail. Really.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Pumpkin Pie Galore

California is the second largest pumpkin-producing state in the nation, after Illinois. Here are the tons grown in each of the last 10 years and their total value.

*--*

Tons (in thousands) Value (in millions) 1997 72,145 $10.8

*--*

Source: California Agricultural Statistics Service, Sacramento

Researched by TRACY THOMAS / Los Angeles Times

*

One-offs Meta-mogul Bill Gates has bought a $1.35-million lot in an exclusive Indian Wells community that will not only be golf-adjacent but also pre-wired with high-capacity fiber optics. . . . Wine country billboards along California 101 invite visitors to Fetzer Vineyards, but, because an ad agency didn’t like the looks of Fetzer’s elms, it used a stock photo--of a tree-lined lane in California’s vini-rival, France. . . . The difference between former Gov. Pat Brown and the Santa with whom he was depicted in the previous California Dateline was that White House Santa Robert George served nine terms in Washington while Brown had to settle for two terms in Sacramento.

EXIT LINE

“A half-eaten apple is not a deadly weapon.”

--J. Clinton Peterson, presiding justice of the 1st District Court of Appeal. A 15-year-old Walnut Creek boy named Gavin, on lunch break on school grounds last year, threw his apple core at the wall to watch it splatter. Instead, it flew through a partly closed door and knocked a teacher unconscious. He was charged with felony assault. Even though a Superior Court judge ruled he had not intended to hit the teacher, he found Gavin guilty anyway, to send a message. The appeals court said 3 to 0 that it disapproved of apple-hurling, but disapproved even more of “finding people guilty of crimes they did not commit.”

California Dateline appears every other Tuesday.