NO CODDLING, PLEASE

Don Wycliff wants to know: "Why is the Democrat-loving, Republican-hating, pond scum-swilling, lower-than-the-rug-on-the-floor, biased, liberal [curl upper lip when pronouncing] press protecting George W. Bush?" Good question. It's bugged me for a long time, too.

To put it another way, Wycliff has an interesting take today in the Chicago Tribune on how "an inarticulate president" is saved from himself by professional journalists who translate "Bushspeak" for their readers. (Thank you for the link, Romenesko.)

Reporters, he writes, are "trained to seek meaning and the meaningful" and so focus on winnowing the sublime from the ridiculous in "any utterance by the president." Those who cover him, therefore, have routinely "overlooked the mangled syntax, penetrated the rhetorical fog and extracted some usable lines from the dross and manufactured stories that had the president sounding, if not quite statesmanlike, then at least intelligible."

The why of it is more complicated, however. Wycliff writes: "Ideally, we would have a president so articulate that we would never be in doubt as to what he said." Since that's not the case, "this confronts us with the question whether our purpose is to transmit to readers what the president means when he speaks out or to simply relate what he says. I have always felt that transmitting meaning is paramount."

There we disagree. Reporters shouldn't be translating what the little fucker says into what he means or what they think he means. If they want to hold his hand, let them join his staff.

Postscript: If you want to see the guy at his most inarticulate, just go to CNN.com and click the video link (on the right) next to the headline Bush: 'We answered all' 9/11 panel questions. It's absolutely hilarious.

This just in: "I'm laughing out loud at Wednesday's blog," Straight Up reader Joan Daniels writes. "By the way, during his what-was-it 3rd prime-time press conference in almost four years a couple of weeks ago, updating us on the current situation in Iraq, his inarticulate comments were unbelievable as usual. As a matter of fact, his command of the English language actually seemed to have further deteriorated, if that's possible. There were so many misstatements to choose from. ...

"How can he be the President? Doesn't his inability to utter an intelligent sentence concern anyone, even if in favor of his policies? Isn't he the Leader of the Free World? How about his staff? Are they sitting in their seats grimacing as he speaks? I'm embarrassed that he's my President!"