For my latest posting at Substack, I rise in defence of the historic US news agency Associated Press, which has been stripped on President Donald Trump’s orders of White House press access. Its crime? To stick to its style book and continue to call the Gulf of Mexico by that centuries-old name ….
A person’s common law name, I remember being taught decades ago, is the name by which he or she is known. Billy Fox can accordingly become, legally, Jimmy Knox simply by persuading everyone that’s now what he should be called.
If US law also sees it that way, Donald Trump’s weird executive order renaming the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America may be above formal reproach. If still weird.
No matter that for 400 years or more, the world has come to no harm by referring to that body of water as the Gulf of Mexico. Americans, or those who settle for saloon bar brawling in place of statesmanship, naturally welcome the change
Alterego's phoyo of the logo on the former AP building in New York
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