Bad copy of the day award -- CNN edition

This is not a post about how terrible CNN’s online editors have become. That’s been old news for at least five years. Instead, I’d like to gleefully point out one of the more confusing and egregious word choices to appear in recent memory.

Tyler Perry is attempting to become a more serious filmmaker by putting out a movie called “For Colored Women,” based on a play with a similar (but longer) name. The news story is about Perry’s struggle to get people besides “colored women” to come see it – he’s afraid that everyone else will assume they won’t relate to the movie. The story paraphrases a local man on the street’s view of the potential problem:

“Yet he [the man interviewed] too said he has wondered how Perry will reach nonwomen of color with a movie explicitly about women of color.”

“Nonwomen”? That little gem doesn’t even make it past my spell check program, let alone pass any logic tests. I can understand people having a hard time pluralizing “courts martial” or getting confused by “yes we have no bananas today,” but this brand of lazy and wrong just hurts. CNN, this isn’t your first offense by far, but I’ll still try to help you out a little bit:

“Yet he [the man interviewed] too said he has wondered how Perry will reach _______ with a movie explicitly about women of color.”

• “other demographics”
• "a broader audience"
• "a wider array of viewers"
• “the eponymous group of ladies, as well as, but not limited to, men of color, men of less color, women and men with not much pigment at all, people who blush easily, albinos (but not the freaky kind who walk around with no sunglasses on so you can see their weird red eyes), and kids between the ages of 16 and 24 who aren’t caught up with either Twilight or pretentious art flicks.”