September 26, 2007 7:19 AM

Remedial Presidenting 101

Bush’s UN Speech Full of Fone-eh-tick Pronunciations for World LeadersPhonetic Notes For Bush’s UN Speech Accidentally Released

ABC News’ Ann Compton and Jennifer Duck report: Never before has the White House released a draft version of the President’s speech to the annual United Nations General Assembly. But this year, a glimpse of how the President sees his speeches was accidentally placed on the UN website along with the speechwriters’ cell phone numbers. Pronunciations for President Bush’s friend French President Sarkozy “[sar-KOzee]” appeared in draft #20 on the UN website. Other pronunciations included the Mugabe “[moo-GAHbee] regime” and pronunciations for countries “Kyrgyzstan [KEYRgeez-stan]” and “Mauritania [moor-EH-tain-ee-a].”

OK, so no reasonable person would expect a President to be able to flawlessly pronounce all manner of foreign names. We’re Americans, and it’s something that we generally suck at. What’s funny about this, though, is that this represents a MAJOR screw-up by an Administration image machine that normally is beyond zealous in how it allows Our Glorious and Benevolent Leader © to be seen. I seriously doubt that The Worst President EVER © is the first American President to use this sort of phonetic assistance, but it’s particularly ironic for a President with such a strong reputation for intellectual incuriosity and a pronounced lack of intellectual agility. I suppose if nothing else, this will provide yet more fodder for late-night comics…as if they really need any more help.

Of course, if the image makers responsible for massaging the public visage of King George the Worst © , they’d be supplying phonetic pronunciations for things like “universal health care”, “troop withdrawal”, or “Medicare”. Yeah, like that’s going to happen….

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This page contains a single entry by Jack Cluth published on September 26, 2007 7:19 AM.

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