This headline promised more than it delivered
The headline reads: “Snakes force Liberian President George Weah out of office.”
So I wondered was it snakes, as in the Liberian version of Nancy Pelosi or Robert Mueller or Adam Schiff? And office, as in the presidency?
No:
Press secretary Smith Toby told the BBC that on Wednesday two black snakes were found in the foreign affairs ministry building, his official place of work.
All staff have been told to stay away until 22 April.
“It’s just to make sure that crawling and creeping things get fumigated from the building,” Mr Toby said.
“The Ministry of Foreign Affairs hosts the office of the president, so it did an internal memo asking the staff to stay home while they do the fumigation,” he said.
The office of the president has been based in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs since a fire in 2006 gutted the nearby presidential mansion.
A FrontPage Africa news website video shows workers trying to attack the snakes when they appeared near the building’s reception.
“The snakes were never killed,” Mr Toby said. “There was a little hole somewhere [through which] they made their way back.”
Isn’t that just like a snake.
George Weah? The striker for AC Milan back in the day? President? Gee I didn’t know he became a president of a nation. That man had won world footballer of the year at one point.
Not only were the snakes never killed, they were, so far as the article goes, never identified.
One must assume that the Liberians know their deadly viper/cobra/mamba from a harmless African Water Snake, say.
https://blog.arcelormittal.com/2013/12/05/the-hitchhikers-guide-to-liberian-snakes-by-john-howell-arcelormittal-liberias-environment-manager/
I have to disagree with Neo. The article delivered EXACTLY what the headline claimed. It is our expectation of subtlety, metafor, and double meanings that is at fault.
Perhaps journalism would better if it studiously avoided that sort of cleverness and just reported the news.