The great Media Research Center ran further with an observation I also recently made about Bush being labeled a moron (yes, still, after all these years) by liberal media elites (and Canada’s Liberal Party elites) over his supposed language skills problem which scientifically proves he’s a moron, even though as they call him that, they make hilarious gaffes (which, mind you, says nothing about their intelligence).
1. Here’s my latest example
2. Here’s another
3. Here’s another
4. Here’s another
5. Here’s another
…and there’s many many more.
Here’s Media Research Center’s latest:
Reuters Sees ‘Embarrassing Gaffe’ by Bush, But Gaffe Was Reuters’
Catching up with an item from last week, OpinionJournal.com’s James Taranto suggested “stupidity,” “laziness” or “dishonesty” were the only choices to explain a September 21 Reuters dispatch about a supposedly “embarrassing gaffe” by President Bush. Yahoo headlined the story: “Mandela still alive after embarrassing Bush remark.” It began: “Nelson Mandela is still very much alive despite an embarrassing gaffe by U.S. President George W. Bush, who alluded to the former South African leader’s death in an attempt to explain sectarian violence in Iraq.” Piling on the Bush is a moron theme, the unbylined Reuters story concluded: “References to his death—Mandela is now 89 and increasingly frail—are seen as insensitive in South Africa.” But Reuters made the “embarrassing gaffe,” not Bush, since Bush was speaking metaphorically and never said Mandela was dead.
[Taranto wrote, quoting President Bush:]
“…Part of the reason why there is not this instant democracy in Iraq is because people are still recovering from Saddam Hussein’s brutal rule. I thought an interesting comment was made when somebody said to me, I heard somebody say, where’s Mandela? Well, Mandela is dead, because Saddam Hussein killed all the Mandelas. He was a brutal tyrant that divided people up and split families, and people are recovering from this. So there’s a psychological recovery that is taking place. …”
Taranto picked up:
In this context, it is clear that the literal meaning of “Where’s Mandela?” is “Where is the Iraqi who will play the role in his country that Mandela played in post-apartheid South Africa?” This was a pithy metaphor, not an “embarrassing gaffe.”
Now, how did Reuters get the story wrong? There are, it seems to us, three explanations:
– Stupidity. The reporter was so bone-headedly literal-minded that he simply did not understand the rhetorical device Bush was employing.
– Laziness. The reporter wasn’t actually at the press conference and didn’t bother to check the context of the quote.
– Dishonesty. The reporter knew full well that Bush was speaking metaphorically and deliberately twisted his meaning in order to fit the stereotype that Bush “has a reputation for verbal faux pas.”
In the case of the particular Reuters dispatch…laziness is the most likely answer. It’s datelined Johannesburg, so the reporter surely was not at the press conference. But ultimately the explanation for the “worldwide coverage” this “gaffe” has received is either stupidity or dishonesty. Some journalist either failed to understand or deliberately misrepresented Bush’s remark…
END of Excerpt
For Taranto’s September 21 compilation in full: www.opinionjournal.com
United Auto Workers (UAW) President Ron Gettelfinger
Rebecca Cook / Reuters
And as if to make my day better by starting it with a bit of a snicker, the National Post has this picture on their web site’s front page:
Many people—perhaps even at the National Post—will miss the error, but it’s simply that there should be no apostrophe before the ‘S’ in the word Americans. I see this all the time in the mainstream print media, which has editors. And it still surprises me. And it surprises me a tiny bit when an executive in one of the world’s biggest unions—the President of the union—marches around with a glaring grammatical error like that even if it wasn’t him who made the sign. The point: he won’t be criticized—and in fact I will be for pointing it out. Liberals will email me calling me petty and petulant. And that’s just funny.
PTBC was founded by Mr. Johannesen in 2000.
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