Taking words literally can make you look foolish

Russ Fulcher is the U.S. Representative for Idaho’s first congressional district and sits on the House Committee on Education and Labor. On October 12, 2019 the Lewiston Tribune had an article by Joel Mills titled Fulcher warns about Federal Agencies (also reprinted in the Idaho Press). It reported his comments from a town hall meeting in Lewison which ended with:

“And he said that well-intentioned environmental regulations can backfire. As an example, he pointed out that the U.S. now has to rely on China to supply much of the lead needed for industrial applications because smelting operations like those that once peppered northern Idaho have long been shuttered.

‘Everyone who has one of these has got lead,’ he said, holding up his cellphone. ‘Or anyone who writes with a No. 2. pencil has got lead. We get it from China. So we shut down facilities that were marginally good-bad with emissions, and now we’re buying it all from facilities that have zero precautions.”

But pencil lead isn’t made from metal. You could find that out either in the Wikipedia article or in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary entry. Henry Petroski’s 1989 book The Pencil: a history of design and circumstance explains:

“Although it may incorporate dozens of raw materials, the lead pencil derives its specific name from the one material that it is least likely to contain. The ‘lead’ of today’s lead pencil is really a mixture of graphite, clay, and other ingredients, and even the paint used on the pencil’s exterior is likely to be lead-free in response to concerns raised in the early 1970s.”

On October 16, 2019 an editorial by Marty Trillhaase in the Lewiston Tribune titled Get that congressman a pencil sharpener corrected Mr. Fulcher for not exactly being the sharpest pencil in the box.

There also is no dog in a Hot Dog, and no frog in a Frogmore Stew.  

At least Mr. Fulcher was right about some lead being in cellphones.