09.21.07
Fantastic Headline, But…
Mandela still alive after embarrassing Bush remark
Despite the fabulous headline, I have to - shockingly - defend El Presidente here. What he said, specifically was:
I heard somebody say, Where’s Mandela?’ Well, Mandela’s dead because Saddam Hussein killed all the Mandelas,
It’s fairly obvious that Bush was referring to an archetypal figure, and not Nelson Mandela literally. He was making the - reasonably defensible - claim that Iraq doesn’t have a Mandela-like unifying figure because Saddam killed most or all of the potential aspirants. I’m not sure how the quote could be seriously interpreted as Bush claiming that Saddam actually killed Nelson Mandela. I mean, would it be clearer if Bush had said - complete with “air quotes”:
Well, “Mandela” [motion air quotes] is dead…
Or, for the hard-of-analogy:
Well, all the potential inspirational and unifying figures resembling South Africa’s still very much alive Nelson Mandela are dead…
Really, this guy says plenty of stupid shit - this is the best you could do?