Thursday, May 19, 2005

Bush discovers synonyms

Here was the challenge for Dubya's speechwriters for his appearance last night at a dinner of the International Republican Institute, an organisation which (with a partner Democratic Institute) builds political capacity in developing countries: Dubya wanted to say that he and Pope John Paul II both have exactly the same knowledge about what God wants for his people. But they knew that having JP2 and Bush phrase it identically might be a bit of a reach, even by the standards of the 13th Apostle.

So instead of Dubya's typical line

History moves toward freedom because the desire for freedom is written in every human heart

we get

Everywhere he went, Pope John Paul preached that the call of freedom is for every member of the human family -- because the Author of Life wrote it into our common human nature.

Looks like the number of Gospels just went down from 4 to 2.

No comments: