End of an error

There will, presumably, come a day when it is no longer amusing to watch video footage of the public-speaking antics of George W Bush, but that day has most certainly not yet arrived, and so it's a pleasure to pass on this clip from David Letterman's show on Friday night, a compendium of his long-running and now regrettably concluded series Great Moments In Presidential Speeches. I'm struck by how many of these I'd forgotten. I suspect that's because the really famous Bushisms -- in order to become famous in the first place -- had to be obvious language-manglings, easily reproducible in print or in conversation. But watch, for example, from 1m50s to 1m59s in this video: Bush says nothing technically wrong, and yet the comedy value is inexplicably vast. I realise that posting this defines me as a despicable member of the Bush-hating chattering classes condemned so cogently yesterday by the influential media commentator Julie Burchill, but it's a sacrifice I'm prepared to make.