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!”
