Th-Th-That's All, Folks
Mark Crispin Miller, the NYU professor and political critic who has long enjoyed a minor celebrity among the duller and more dour American liberals, is floating a new line on W and his losing battle with spoken English. (The book is called The Bush Dyslexicon.) He's not stupid, he's a sociopath, argues Miller, claiming that W only gets distracted and misspeaks when he veers away from his favored subjects of violence and domination.
On those occasions, apparently, he is just so damn bored that he might say anything. The following is from an article about Miller and his book in the Toronto Star:
"I know how hard it is to put food on your family," Bush was quoted as saying.
"That wasn't because he's so stupid that he doesn't know how to say, `Put food on your family's table' — it's because he doesn't care about people who can't put food on the table," Miller says.
But sometimes there is more than MADD (Moral Attention Deficit Disorder) at stake in Bush's misstatements. When it suits him, Miller plays the Freudian slip card:
But equating Bush's malapropisms with Quayle's inability to spell "potato" is a dangerous assumption, Miller says.
At a public address in Nashville, Tenn., in September, Bush provided one of his most memorable stumbles. Trying to give strength to his case that Saddam Hussein had already deceived the West concerning his store of weapons, Bush was scripted to offer an old saying: Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. What came out was the following:
"Fool me once, shame ... shame on ... you." Long, uncomfortable pause. "Fool me — can't get fooled again!"
Played for laughs everywhere, Miller saw a darkness underlying the gaffe.
"There's an episode of Happy Days, where The Fonz has to say, `I'm sorry' and can't do it. Same thing," Miller said.
Yes, how true. Get this man a blog of his own!
11:17:54 AM 
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