My local news programs have led me to believe it's a holiday. It started last Thursday, during the weather segment on the Good Day L.A. show on Fox affiliate KTTV. At the end that portion a graphic displays behind the female they get to read the teleprompter (that's not sexism; really, it's always a woman--and not generally one who is a meteorologist) showing the forecast for five days. That was the first time this particular Monday appeared.
This five-day graphic notes the projected high and low temperatures for each day and includes an image identifying whether it will be really sunny, mostly sunny, partially sunny, cloudy, or holy-crap-there's-water-falling-from-the-sky-run-for-your-life. Additionally, if there's a holiday or some event being commemorated there's another image in honor of it featured on that day. For example, in the five-day graphic, Sunday had a little heart with the text "Happy Valentine's Day":
Yep, this is a photo of the TV screen. Nothing but the most cutting edge in technology for my readers.
However, as we pull back to show the entire screen, we see that on Monday (i.e., today, as this is being posted) there's another little image here:
At this point long-time readers will be able to anticipate what I thought upon seeing that. And yes, my knee-jerk reaction was to go look at my 2010 Simpsons calendar and confirm what I thought it should be called: "Presidents' Day" (with the apostrophe after the s).
Being old enough to remember when there were separate days off in February in honor of the birthdays of both Washington and Lincoln. As we now have only one that appears to be attributed to the title both of those men held rather than be named for either individual, it seemed as though that day was honoring more than one former president, and as such the apostrophe in the text on the graphic was... less than accurate.
In my journal that day, when reflecting on how no one at the station appeared to notice, I glibly wrote: "But hey, it's only the news (and only in the second-largest media market in the country); it's not like paying attention is really their strong suit."
On Friday I did some further research (which is to say: in the morning I flipped around to each of the stations with a program where there'd be a weather forecast.) to see how other shows were addressing this situation.
First, the other local morning show, the KTLA Morning News, only featured a heart-shaped graphic for Valentine's Day (with its more obvious punctuation), eschewing anything for Monday whatsoever. Something of a uh-let's-just-pretend-it's-not-happening-because-we-don't-know-what-it-should-be, but perhaps at least with the awareness that they're not sure.
Obviously ABC, CBS, and NBC have nationally televised morning shows, but throughout those broadcasts they "throw" it to the local affiliates for someone in the local station to give a quick report on what we can expect "in our neck of the woods."
KCBS had no holidays noted on their seven-day forecast.
Uh, guys, eyes up to the upper middle. Guys...
It became clear that the images were not created by anyone in-house at either station but must have been acquired from some third-party. (In retrospect it's not surprising that this task would be outsourced.) Of course, that no one at either station could find what would seem to be a properly punctuated image was, at that time, disappointing (even if not shocking).
Although none of the other stations got it either right or wrong, during this bit of research I did see some commercials that sought to bring attention to the sales they were holding during the weekend.
GMC abandoned an apostrophe in their text:
So at least the advertisers could make some effort in this arena.
However, none of this really identified what the day was supposed to be called (but I always trust those who make the Simpsons calendar). So on Saturday I took the half-assed investigation a little deeper: the 'net.
According to this piece on Snopes.com there is no actual federal holiday called "Presidents" or "Presidents'" or "President's" Day; an executive order from 1971 identified it as "Washington's Day," but obviously that's not what's it's called in common parlance. Or even in my Simpsons calendar. Still, even looking it up in Wikipedia will get you directed to "Washington's Day," where it is noted as being referred to as "Presidents Day" or "Presidents' Day." (The spelling of "President's" Day, according to that article, is "not endorsed by any major dictionary or usage authority.") And ultimately the shift to that name came into play during the '80s "with a push from advertisers," so it's a marketing ploy.
Which explains why the commercials paid more attention to how to spell it; they're the ones who got it popularized in the first place.
Thus, the only conclusion that appears applicable is this: There is no right or wrong answer. But hey, we have the day off (well, some of us), so who cares?
The more I thought about it after that the more it occurred to me that whether it's about only the Father of Our Country (birthday next Monday) or intended to include The Great Emancipator (birthday last Friday), both of those men fought to give us the freedom to spell the day whatever way we want, to make it so some can honor multiple presidents (apostrophe after the s), or just one (apostrophe before the s), or merely presidents in general (no apostrophe).
But in the graphic used by KTTV and KNBC that still doesn't explain what that image above the text is. That doesn't look like the White House to me.
Of course, given the massive snow storms that hit the eastern U.S. last week, it's unlikely that anyone outside of California has time to be looking at this stuff today. When eventually they finish shoveling snow and have a moment for the web they're going to look at that 79-degree projection and just be pissed off.
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