Here is a link to a Yahoo News site which has the image and the caption, while it lasts.
WTF? Who on Earth is writing this stuff? I think it’s hilarious, but there’s a chance someone could get really and truly offended over the extremely broad and somewhat unflattering generalization.
On a related note, who uses the term `phlegmatic’ anymore? In this context, I think it means calm and unemotional as opposed to full of snot.
Well… that’s just bizarre.
The only time I ever see the word “phlegmatic” used, it’s always in relation to the English.
Or butlers.
Especially English butlers.
I have a feeling it’s going to turn out to be a case of someone having written a “joke” caption for his/her picture, and accidentally sent it to the news bureau instead of the correct one.
I saw that too, and was baffled.
Daniel
Speaking as a Briton who is polite, witty and phlegmatic, I can attest to the veracity of final two claims.
AP has no copy editors, and frequent unintentional hilarity resulkts. But, yes, in this case, I think it was a joke caption that slipped through.
Hmmm, hear there’s a job opening at AP . . .
Are the AP and the AFP the same agency?
In related news, the oldest man in Minneapolis died last night. He had many plans for the future, including breathing.
Neglected to mention that according the link, it’s an AFP photo, not an AP photo as the thread title says. But again, they could be the same agency for all I know about news bureaus.
Since the date is not April 1, and the site is not The Onion, it looks like that was a gag caption written “in-house” and not intended to be made public. Oops!
They are not. The Associated Press, based in New York, is a non-profit cooperative that’s owned by its members, which consist of about 1,500 U.S. daily newspapers. Agence France-Presse is headquartered in Paris and partly owned by the French government, although the state’s holding has dropped below 50%.
Interesting…
Finding that the original article has disappeared, I did a quick google and found the apparent source of the stray caption:
I used it just last night. One of our Fakesgiving guests said she likes the word phlegm, so I asked about phlegmatic. (Man, the people you meet…) I think she likes the original better. And you’re right about the definition.
Phlegmatic people are reasonably good-humoured.
Not as agreeable as those sanguine types, but I’d rather be around them than some bilious fellow.
I’ve noticed the photo captions are frequently copied from a (sometimes tangentially) related article; usually, Yahoo’s AP and AFP photos will be accompanied by a link to that story, like this (the one that I suspect should have appeared next to this particular photo):
Polite, witty but not very chic: what it means to be British
Without that context, though, the caption just seems completely random. And in this case, somewhat surreal and very amusing.
The photo from the OP seems to have expired, but after perusing the article, it seems like the caption really should have borrowed the last few lines instead of the opening sentence from the article. To wit: