Fact-checkers approaching the metaphysical

Simon Hoggart's Week, The Guardian, Saturday March 18th, 2006 describes a conversation with Cressida Leyshon, deputy fiction editor of the New Yorker:

We talked about the magazine's dreaded fact-checkers. Like hunting dogs, they never let go. Once an American friend of mine had written a profile of Margaret Thatcher and politely asked if the fact-checker could call me. He did. Again, and again. They don't just ask about simple matters of detail, but about issues which approach the metaphysical. "John writes that on her own, Margaret Thatcher likes to cook 'simple' dishes, such as Welsh rarebit and coronation chicken. I'm all right with Welsh rarebit, but could you call coronation chicken a 'simple' dish?"

But, I said cheerily, you can't have fact-checkers in the fiction department. But they do. Apparently they ran a short story in which a character goes to McDonald's for chicken nuggets. A reader wrote in triumphantly pointing out that chicken nuggets were not introduced until the following year. In New Yorker terms, that is the equivalent of the Titanic for the White Star Line, or Nick Leeson at Barings.