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The NY Times Is Getting Dragged By Dictionary.com (And Others) For Confusing Angela Bassett With Omarosa

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During Monday night’s 70th annual Primetime Emmy Awards, Angela Bassett and Tiffany Haddish presented the award for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series, which ended up going to Rachel Brosnahan for Amazon’s The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. Bassett, who was looking radiant as ever in a strapless white Azzi & Osta gown, currently stars in Fox’s cop procedural 9-1-1 — although of course she’s been a staple of TV and film since the mid ’90s.

What we’re saying is, after about a quarter decade of career defining roles in films such as How Stella Got Her Groove Back and Waiting to Exhale — to more recently, Black Panther and American Horror Story — it’s kind of hard to not immediately recognize Bassett.

And yet…

https://twitter.com/juliareinstein/status/1042035475282907136

Come on, New York Times! With Trump’s constant attacks on the 125 Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper, people need them to be sharper on their toes than ever. And furthermore, why would Omarosa, who is pretty much a universal pariah at this point, even be invited to the Emmys in the first place, much less allowed to present an award? That alone should have given any writer pause.

Not surprisingly, the publication began getting called out on Twitter, with perhaps the most brutal burn coming from none other than Dictionary.com:

Others had a lot of similar observations to make about the error:

https://twitter.com/britrbennett/status/1042061826970664960

https://twitter.com/SilpaKov/status/1042050649612083200

For what it’s worth, the New York Times Communications Twitter account eventually ran a retraction, blaming the error on a photo wire service and promising to issue a correction.

Hmm, that ought to make everything better.

Update: Ms. Bassett has responded, and seems unbothered by the mix-up.