Opinion: The purfuit of happineff

The skeleton crew operating our newsroom phones on Independence Day was inundated by calls from outraged readers who accused us of altering the copy of the Declaration of Independence published on page 17A of the July 4 Times.

They wondered why we'd replaced the letter s with f in many words. Were we guilty of a multitude of typographical errors? Or had we purposely altered that most sacred of historical American documents to make fun of our Founding Fathers -- or sun of our Sounding Sathers, as the case may be?

Of course, we're confident that the vast majority of Times readers are aware that calligraphers in the 18th century often wrote the lower-case s in a manner that was virtually interchangeable with the lower-case f. Don't ask us why; they just did. And our reprint of the Declaration of Independence was faithful to Thomas Jefferson's original.

Anyway, the little Independence Day incident gave us further reason to appreciate the comedic genius of Stan Freberg, whose masterwork, Stan Freberg Presents The United States Of America, dealt with this very issue.

In one of its set pieces, a skeptical Benjamin Franklin is being importuned to add his name to the list of signatories to the Declaration of Independence. Franklin scornfully notes that John Hancock's name already takes up a prominent space. "Mighty fancy handwriting for an insurance salesman," Freberg's Franklin snorts.

Then Franklin starts critiquing the document's language. What's this "life, liberty and the purfuit of happineff?" he wants to know.

The people who called to complain Wednesday obviously aren't Stan Freberg fans.

We chose to reprint the Declaration of Independence on July 4 because the document is an enduring reminder of the values that make America great. The reaction to it reminded us of another trait that has marked Americans from the earliest days of our republic: an ability to laugh at ourselves.

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