UPDATE: Mitt Romney Only Doubling Size of Mansion, Not Quadrupling

Evergreen money tree presidential candidate Mitt Romney is only trying to double the size of his beachfront squatter's den instead of quadrupling it as reported. Hm, let us get out our calculators here...divide by square root of total living space, minus number of cars parked in the garage, add 2012... oh whatever, net effect zero, Mitt Romney still appears as out-of-touch with the vast majority of hobo Americans as ever before. Even Mitt Romney knows this, who did not bother to go to the press with this clarification. Instead it comes from the publisher of the New Hampshire Union Leader, whose big fact-correction scoop directly from the mouth of Mittens will surely lead Everyone to Think Harder about correctly reporting the details of King Romney's enormous fortune from now on. When will the lamestream media learn?

The difference is some kind of technical argument over square-footage measurements of "non-living space" like a basement and a garage.

 Here is Union Leader publisher Joe McQuaid with his big Tsk Tsk:

Still, I asked [Romney,] why give the media and political foes raw meat right now by filing for permits to tear down a La Jolla, Calif., beach house and quadruple its size? That was the wire story we had run the day before, and it was all over the Internet. It's not accurate, Romney said, simply. The application he made, two years ago, was to double the living space by turning one story into two. The “quadrupling'' was a measurement of added nonliving space, including a basement and garage.
That sounds more reasonable, I said. Had he issued a statement to that effect?
He shrugged his shoulders with a “why bother?'' look.
I think it's worth the bother. Accuracy in media is more than the name of a group. It ought to be what we in the profession strive for, rather than to have the story fit a preconceived notion.

What have we learned from this important update? Mitt Romney does not count basements or garages as "living space." Where does Mitt Romney think college graduates are living these days? [ Union Leader / Photo by Gage Skidmore, Creative Commons license 2.0 ]