Scrapbook
Scrapbook Weisbergisms Slate editor Jacob Weisberg has been collecting George W. Bush's slips of the tongue for the last few years— enough to have already published two volumes of "Bushisms."...
...he changed the date on which the wreath is delivered from the day that some southern heritage groups commemorate Jefferson Davis's birthday to the federal Memorial Day holiday...
...columnist Paul Greenberg ("It's all part of a familiar pattern among the punditry . . ."), the American Prospect's Nicholas Confessore ("Among the punditry, reports the Washington Post's Howard Kurtz, learned analysis of Gore's situation . . . can be summed up thusly . . ."), and others...
...You can't say that peaceful relations with Islamic countries are the primary motivation behind beatifying someone who led Catholic troops into battle by holding up a crucifix and shouting, "Behold the Cross of the Lord: Flee, enemy bands...
...We won't bore you with the story, since it wasn't true, and since the retraction from Time is more amusing...
...13, in an address to the diplomatic corps, John Paul II renewed his call for peace with Iraq—but he did, for the first time, allow that war could be licit as a "last resort...
...Four words into the sentence, he realizes that this is potentially a little socially uncomfortable, since he's talking to reporters, so he drops in a socially lubricating joke—"of course, not you"—and then when he returns to his point, he inserts an unplanned reference to other pundits, and mistakenly says "other punditry" instead of "others of the punditry...
...So it's not surprising that Vatican bureaucrats behave and think at times like most other European bureaucrats...
...the Infidels...
...Meanwhile, in February, Ambassador Nicholson will be bringing the American Enterprise Institute's Michael Novak to Rome for meetings with Vatican officials and to give a lecture on just-war theory and Iraq...
...Second, according to documents provided by the White House this week, the practice of delivering a wreath to the Confederate Memorial on Memorial Day continued under Bill Clinton as it does under George W. Bush...
...6, 2001: "I think Bill Clinton is still a very popular in New York City and, in particular, he's very popular with African-American voters, and I think the issue of African-American turnout and particularly being key to Mark Green—I've asked the same question...
...There are a few signs, however, that a small countercurrent might be flowing in Rome...
...To wit: "Last week, The article 'Look Away, Dixieland' (Jan...
...What's left, then, is this: Bush probably starts out to say "Many of the pun-ditry were quick to say, no one is going to follow the United States of America" (just my guess here, but it seems a sensible one...
...Here's Volokh's latest catch, reproduced from volokh.blogspot.com: *** Slate's Bushism of the Day for [Jan...
...Punditry" is a logical application of that rule...
...But it's not a Bushism—it's an -ism shared by English speakers generally...
...21, 2003...
...Thus the need to portray them as sons of Bull Connor (a Democrat) with the old hoods and the hoses conveniently stored out of sight...
...Perhaps they shouldn't do so here, because it may create ambiguity (letting punditry mean either what pundits say or pundits themselves as a group...
...Washington, D.C., Jan...
...27) stated that President George W. Bush 'quietly reinstated' a tradition of having the White House deliver a floral wreath to the Confederate Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery—a practice 'that his father had halted in 1990.' The story is wrong...
...As the Wall Street Journal's James Taranto put it, "other than that, the story was true...
...Here's one from ABC News, June 30, 2002: "Well, there's another point here, which goes to the politics of the issue, which is, if you do create a lot of choices, those—it's going to include suburban public schools...
...We'd say that was just clever spin, were it not for the fact that the Vatican also announced that it will in April beatify Marco d'Aviano, the Capuchin priest who rallied Christians to oppose the Turks' siege of Vienna in 1683...
...The most recent outbreak of this phenomenon was a tale last week in Time magazine about a supposed effort by the Bush White House to truckle to Confederate sympathizers...
...We can't decide whether Novak's lecture should begin or end with "Flee, enemy bands...
...The Vatican is part of old Europe, of course—and we're talking really old Europe...
...And in a nifty bit of counterprogramming, UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh (maitre d' of a blog called the Volokh Conspiracy) has begun fact-checking Slate's Bushisms on a regular basis, with amusing results...
...On Jan...
...First, the elder president Bush did not, as Time reported, end the decades-old practice of the White House delivering a wreath to the Confederate Memorial...
...He's famous in Eastern Europe for both his abstract mysticism and his hard-headed practicality in picking the Polish Jan Sobieski to command the Holy League...
...Liberal Just So Stories In her cover story two weeks ago ("Greed, Oppression, Patriarchy," Jan...
...Vatican Radio added that oil and television ratings were driving war with Iraq...
...Here's another from CNN, Nov...
...Of course, he added that such a war could be avoided if nations "began to apply in a straightforward manner the agreements already signed," by which he probably meant things like U.N...
...as I've said before, just read some transcripts some time...
...Unfortunately for the Bushism cottage industry, the president's famous malapropisms— "Grecians," "misunderestimated"— have become scarcer...
...The journal Civilta Cattolica recently denounced America's belief in its "messianic vocation...
...and both are just as newsworthy and just as humorous as Bush's "other punditry" slip, which is to say not newsworthy or humorous at all...
...and it's to be expected that, especially with voguish words like "pundit," people would apply existing rules to create new terms...
...The examples go on and on, and they all claim to be taking their cue from the pope himself, who over Christmas called peace "obligatory...
...21] was this: "Many of the punditry—of course, not you (laughter)—but other punditry were quick to say, no one is going to follow the United States of America...
...20, 2003), Noemie Emery wrote of the increasingly prevalent depiction of Republicans as "Closet Confederates...
...but if that's the claim, it doesn't seem right...
...But (notes the watchful Vatican reporter John L. Allen Jr...
...More broadly, "-ry" is a suffix that often refers to the class of all people who possess a certain property: cavalry, infantry, yeomanry, tenantry...
...It's pretty common to make this sort of error when one says something extemporaneously...
...Now the errors in these Bushisms are supposed to be obvious—look at this silly inarticulate president of ours mangling the English language—but it's not perfectly clear to me what exactly the mistake here really is (unless it's just "other punditry" instead of "others of the punditry," a fairly banal slip...
...U.S...
...Vatican vs...
...Both are quotes from the author of Bushisms of the Day...
...ambassador James Nicholson quickly responded on Vatican Radio that the pope must have been talking about the failure of Iraq and North Korea to abide by their agreements—and thus the pope was in full agreement with President Bush...
...protocols and the International Criminal Court...
...The reason for it...
...I suppose the claim must be that "punditry" can refer only to what the pundits are saying, rather than to the pundit class generally...
...A quick Lexis search found several instances where "punditry" is used the way Bush is using it—the New York Times's Maureen Dowd ("The punditry got all steamed about that . . ."), CNN's John King ("In the media, especially among the punditry...
...A Republican party that doesn't seem threatening is the great primal fear of the Democrats...
Vol. 8 • February 2003 • No. 20
