Thursday, November 08, 2007

quote of the day

"You can't be the president and the head of the military at the same time."

President of the United States and Commander in Chief of the United States military, the one, the only, George W. Bush, explaining the message he so emphatically gave to Pakistan's President, General Pervez Musharraf

Now, a pet peeve of mine, linguistically speaking at least, is the fact that Americans don't generally use "one," as in, "One can't be the president and the head of the military at the same time." This is what Bush intended, or at least I assume this is what he intended - that no one can simultaneously lead the nation and the military. Which is clearly and blatantly inaccurate. So in this case, perhaps the "you" was in fact intentional, and Bush was trying to say, "You, Musharraf, cannot be the president and the head of the military at the same time." Except this also is clearly wrong, since he in fact IS the president and head of the military. So basically any way you slice & dice this little malapropism, it's still just wrong.

1 comment:

Chiung-Yin said...

this thought also struck me the past few days as I've been listening to NPR on the ride into work