An unexpected visitor dropped by the White House's Rose Garden yesterday to offer a crude yet succint opinion of George Bush by relieving itself on the president's sleeve while he was addressing reporters.
George Bush walks away from the press conference with the bird's deposit on his jacket. Photograph: Ron Sachs/EPA
Giving one of his rare presidential press conferences since becoming the US leader in 2000, Bush was busy defending the beleagured US attorney general, Alberto Gonzales, when the avian heckler swooped by to deliver its whiter than white verdict.
The bird is yet to be formally identified, some say it was a pigeon, others, a sparrow, perhaps it was a lesser spotted sparrow-pigeon, who knows; but its contribution to the proceedings was brief and to the point.
Ever the urbane sophisticate, Bush merely noted the deposit and wiped it into his sleeve with his bare hand without breaking stride, breath or his assault on the record for mentioning al-Qaida the most times in one briefing.
As the Washington Post's Dana Milbank says in an excellent sketch in today's edition:
"Bush invoked the terrorist group 19 times and even suggested it was going after reporters' kids.
'They are a threat to your children, David,' he told NBC's David Gregory.
'It's a danger to your children Jim' Bush informed the New York Times's Jim Rutenberg. This last warning was perplexing because Rutenberg has no children."
To his credit, the commander-in-chief seemed unflappable in a briefing that took in the Iraq funding bill, immigration, the Gonzales affair and the ongoing search for Osama bin Laden.
As Milbank points out:
"His tone was jaunty whether the topic was China ('They need to be eating US beef. They'll like it') or allegations that Justice Department officials broke the law ('It's just political theatre')."
Asked why Bin Laden is still at large, Bush left no room for ambuiguity. "Because we haven't got him yet."
The bird was strangely silent after that but one poster on the Truthdig blog thought the sparrow/pigeon/sparrow-pigeon had not gone far enough.
"It is a huge disappointment that this 'attack' on Public Enemy #666 wasn't more in the violent nature of Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds."
