OK, now I don't know who to slap.

This is a followup to my post of yesterday where I mentioned that George Bush had used the phrase, "Well Mandela's dead because Saddam Hussein killed all the Mandelas" when talking about why a resistance leader was never able to be a uniting force in Iraq against Saddam Hussein.

I said in that post that I thought his phrasing was unfortunate because it might mislead people about the condition of Nelson Mandela.

Well, it did. It mislead lots of people. So many people that the Nelson Mandela Foundation found it necessary to issue a press release telling everyone that Nelson Mandela is still alive.

Although you can place the blame on both the speaker and the listeners, I think ultimately I'm going to blame the President, for two reasons:

1) I always blame the President when he's named George Bush.

2) While many of those reading this blog are obviously intelligent and literate people, this speech was televised all over the world, including rural African villiages with a rudimentary understanding of American phraseology. It appears to have caused a panic in some areas, resulting in many phonecalls to the Nelson Mandela Foundation. It would have been worse, but not many of those rural African villiages have phones.

There was speculation back in 2003 that the President had a wireless microphone in his collar so that his handlers could give him answers to difficult questions (OK, any questions). At this point I think they'd like to give him one of those things they use to keep dogs in the yard. Every time it looked like he was going to get himself in trouble, they could give him a zap.

They probably won't do it, though. They'd have to zap him so much that the news media would be convinced that he had nerve damage.