oh, so that's what they meant

[jfb]

William Saletan:

Thursday morning, President Bush greeted the people of Iraq on their TV screens. "You are a good and gifted people," he told them as Arabic script appeared below his face. I don't know Arabic, but I'm sure the translation didn't convey what Bush means by "gifted." He doesn't mean exceptional. He means ethnic.

What? Go read it.

Comments

[jfb.livejournal.com]

Okay, both of you, cut it out.

Here's what happened: A guy (not the Democratic party) did a Lexis-Nexis search (not a linguistic analysis) and posted to his paid but informal blog (not a peer-reviewed journal). I linked to it because, to me, it was an interesting way of interpreting a phrase (not proof of wrongdoing).

Don't go turning this into a which-side-is-wackier brawl. Left and right both have their share of people so crazy that "left" and "right" hardly apply. William Saletan's little parlor trick isn't in their league.

(For what it's worth, although I don't know much about Saletan's political leanings, I wouldn't call him a mouthpiece for the Democrats. He doesn't seem to like Bush very much, but he supported Bush's wars on Afghanistan and Iraq. In the last few years he's gone after Bush and Hatch, but also Clinton, Daschle, Gore, and Feinstein.

I think the proper context in which to view the "gifted" item is this: Before his current Iraq-centered assignments, his work for Salon was mostly in three ongoing columns about "spin". His strength is analyzing style, not substance. So when he spots an odd phrase in a speech, he talks about it. It's what he does.)