Fox News is known the world over for its painstaking adherence to facts.
So it will come as a great shock that a misprint about drag super-mama RuPaul is still up on their site a full day after it was published.
The report is about Nancy Pelosi, Minority Leader of the United States House of Representatives, appearing as a guest judge on the upcoming season of RuPaul’s Drag Race All-Stars.
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In it, Entertainment reporter Tyler McCarthy attempts to reference the show’s titular host by his last name. He does not succeed at this.
“Pelosi,” he explains, “will be on the runway to judge Paul’s collection of drag queens for an episode of the series’ upcoming return.”
He also refers to the show as RuPaul’s Drag Race when it’s technically a spin-off series — RuPaul’s Drag Race All-Stars, but we’re going to let that one slide.
And just in case anyone thought it was a typo, McCarthy repeats the false name, somewhat hilariously in an attempt to initiate the Fox News audience on what the show is all about:
“For those unfamiliar with the show, it takes various drag queens and assigns them various challenges each episode that Paul and other judges then use to decide who wins.”
We can also overlook the fact that he uses “various” twice in the same sentence (we’re not monsters), but a simple Wikipedia skim will confirm what we already know: RuPaul was born RuPaul Andre Charles.
And if Fox wanted to dive even deeper, they could scroll down a bit to discover that “He was named by his mother, Ernestine ‘Toni’ Charles, a Louisiana native; the ‘Ru’ came from roux, which is the term for the base of gumbo and other creole stews and soups.”
Here’s how it looks, in case they ever care to fix the mistake:
RuPaul’s Drag Race All-Stars season 3 premieres with a special 90-minute episode Thursday, Jan. 25 at 8 p.m. ET on VH1.
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am_psi
Since his stage name is 2 capitalized parts and people routinely refer to him as Ru it’s completely logical for the writer to use Paul in place of a surname. Celebrities with stage names are rarely called by their legal/birth name.
Mandrake
You’re correct, and to contrive a Queerty article on this faux pas is nothing more than an emotional reaction against Fox News.
Tjohn
Kindasorta agree, but RuPaul is his given (legal) name. It’s a non-story but you’d think that some brainiac working on what passes as TV news could google it. Just sloppy work.
CaliKyle
His given name, not a stage name. Yeah,ok, its a non story but don’t state something as fact when you dont know it is. Too lazy for google?
Miss Understood
It might be logical for a person on the street to make that error, not for a professional journalist. But Fox “journalists” are not known for their professionalism.
KevinG
No, any media company should have fact checkers — especially big ones — and any journalist would take two seconds to at least see how other media outlets did it. This is a minor thing but it isn’t defensible.
DistingueTraces
I’m just sorry they didn’t call him “Regis and Kathie Lee”.
mhoffman953
Must be a slow news day.
I wouldn’t say that this is “proof” that the writer of that article doesn’t know RuPaul’s last name because they referred to him as Paul.
Queerty has referred to him similarly in the past. Here are examples of Queerty calling him Ru:
“Ru is only spilling the beans now” https://www.queerty.com/rupauls-surprising-admission-relationship-20170315
“Ru owes us worthwhile finale” https://www.queerty.com/rupauls-drag-race-recap-a-finale-surprise-of-dragzilla-proportions-20120424
I even found times where Queerty has written it as “Ru Paul”, “Ru-Paul”, and even “Ru Pual”
alanballs
My Chinese BF and I love Ru, his teams of judges and his gorgeous queens. The hilarity, goofy-ness, tea-and-shade, gorgeous-ness and fabulous-ness give us a real lift. Can’t wait for All Stars 3 and Season 10.
XOXO from Dongguan City, China.