# Excuse me, Mr. President?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/excuse-me-mr-president/131288>\
**Category:** The BBQ Pit\
**Created:** [October 8, 2002, 12:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/excuse-me-mr-president/131288 "2002-10-08T00:26:51Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 4

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**Author:** ![Liberal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/848f3c/32.png) [@Liberal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Liberal)\
**Post date:** [October 17, 2002, 10:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/excuse-me-mr-president/131288/61 "2002-10-17T10:01:16Z")

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Sofa King wrote:

> [@](#):
>
> In that same speech, he also ranted against Iraq for harboring the notorious terrorist “Eye-boo Nah-dahl.”

Do you remember Jimmy Carter’s inauguration speech? The Eye-talians?

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**Author:** ![Monster104](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c6cbf5/32.png) [@Monster104](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Monster104)\
**Post date:** [October 17, 2002, 4:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/excuse-me-mr-president/131288/62 "2002-10-17T16:36:30Z")

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> [@](#):
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> That’s Abu Nidal to you and me.

So he juxtaposed the ‘Ah’ from Abu with ‘Eye’ from Nidal. So what! I juxtapose words and pronunciations like this all the time. I mix up words, mix up pronunciations of words, and I stutter and stumble in certain conversational situations.

I bet millions of Americans have the same problem.  
Are you saying we’re all fucking idiots because we have trouble speaking certain words, pronunciations, or combinations of words?

Some of you are really petty and disgusting creatures when it comes down to it.

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**Author:** ![Sofa\_King](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/58956e/32.png) [@Sofa\_King](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sofa_King)\
**Post date:** [October 17, 2002, 10:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/excuse-me-mr-president/131288/63 "2002-10-17T22:38:31Z")

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> [@](#):
>
> So he juxtaposed the ‘Ah’ from Abu with ‘Eye’ from Nidal. So what!

Disgusting I may be, but transposing the vowel sounds still won’t get you to the way the fellow’s name is usually pronounced. Unless, of course, _you don’t recognize the name at all, try to pronounce it incorrectly, and fuck up the incorrect pronunciation as well._

I’ll give you that possibility, all right. In fact, I am _much_ more inclined to believe that my President doesn’t really know who Abu Nidal was, or couldn’t remember the fact that [he died](http://www.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/meast/08/19/mideast.nidal/) just three months ago. This, the same President who has made the war on terrorism his number-one priority for the past year. This, the same President who isn’t inclined to discuss how or why it’s so important to force a vote on a war with Iraq after having “no plans on his desk” three months ago and an election looming now. This, the same President who hasn’t supplied a lick of proof for his allegations outside of various permutations of “take my word for it.”

_Take my non-properly-pronouncing, vague, intellectually uncurious, suspiciously political smoke-and-mirrors-sounding goddamned fucking word for it in this time of emotional and–more importantly–electoral tension._

**Why** should I take his word for it? Why shouldn’t I take such a mistake as evidence that the guy is unfamiliar with the subject matter of which he speaks?

The truth is gonna come out about this guy someday, and someday we will _all_ be horrified at how unqualified, how disinterested, how uninvolved, and how uninformed this man is in the most important office in the world.

How do I know this? _ **Take my forking wood for it.** _

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