How the press handles Bushisms
It is always good for a laugh when Bush mangles the English language (well, it's humorous in a dark, depressing, how-did-this-idiot-become-President sort of way), but here is a misstatement from yesterday's press conference that is double entertaining, because Bush not only used the wrong word in a sentence, he actually then accompanied that with a definition of the word he was misusing. Here is it, straight from the horse's mouth--actually, from the official White House transcript:
What is perhaps even more interesting about this is that, in some cases, the press decided to edit what Bush said in its news reports. I did a search in news.google.com for the phrase "people that had been trained in some instances to disassemble". What I found was that many reporters did report the phrase as is, such as Washington Post reporter Jim VandeHei, Scrpps-Howard reporter Bill Straub, and William Douglas of Knight Ridder. I then did a search for a corrected version of the phrase, using the word that Bush obviously meant to say: "people that had been trained in some instances to dissemble"--and found that the report by Mark Silva of the Chicago Tribune had the edited version of this transcript. Whether the responsibility for this change comes from Silva himself, or an editor, or a spell checker program, or just plain unconscious editing on the reporter's part, I don't know, but the article with this corrected version was reprinted in several newspapers around the country.
I once came across a much more overt example of editing a Bushism on November 20, 2003. Bush on that day made the statement, "We could have less troops in Iraq, we could have the same number of troops in Iraq, we could have more troops in Iraq, what is ever necessary to secure Iraq." Aside from the fact that Bush said "less troops" instead of "fewer troops", a not uncommon sort of grammatical error among many Americans that Bush frequently engages in, it was clear that he meant to say "whatever is necessary", rather than "what is ever necessary". I found that many newspapers, including both the Washington Post and the Washington Times, had edited the transcript to correct the misstatement, while the Atlanta Journal Constitution reported his words verbatim.
It seemed like to me they based some of their decisions on the word of -- and the allegations -- by people who were held in detention, people who hate America, people that had been trained in some instances to disassemble -- that means not tell the truth.
What is perhaps even more interesting about this is that, in some cases, the press decided to edit what Bush said in its news reports. I did a search in news.google.com for the phrase "people that had been trained in some instances to disassemble". What I found was that many reporters did report the phrase as is, such as Washington Post reporter Jim VandeHei, Scrpps-Howard reporter Bill Straub, and William Douglas of Knight Ridder. I then did a search for a corrected version of the phrase, using the word that Bush obviously meant to say: "people that had been trained in some instances to dissemble"--and found that the report by Mark Silva of the Chicago Tribune had the edited version of this transcript. Whether the responsibility for this change comes from Silva himself, or an editor, or a spell checker program, or just plain unconscious editing on the reporter's part, I don't know, but the article with this corrected version was reprinted in several newspapers around the country.
I once came across a much more overt example of editing a Bushism on November 20, 2003. Bush on that day made the statement, "We could have less troops in Iraq, we could have the same number of troops in Iraq, we could have more troops in Iraq, what is ever necessary to secure Iraq." Aside from the fact that Bush said "less troops" instead of "fewer troops", a not uncommon sort of grammatical error among many Americans that Bush frequently engages in, it was clear that he meant to say "whatever is necessary", rather than "what is ever necessary". I found that many newspapers, including both the Washington Post and the Washington Times, had edited the transcript to correct the misstatement, while the Atlanta Journal Constitution reported his words verbatim.
LOL
Posted by
Justine |
1:23 AM
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