I realize there are very few flaws in Bush the Magnificent, Liberator of Peoples and Hammer of Righteousness. But one of the very few - and totally insignificant, of course! - is his strange habit of mangling syntax. I've always wondered about it, because his father has a similar problem.
Stan Crock of Business Week has been wondering about this as well: "Analyzating" Bush's Grey Matter 03/12/04. Crock (who is a foreign-affairs reporter and not a clinician or a medical journalist) speculates that it is unlikely to be apraxia (a physical speaking problem) or dyslexia. But from talking to some speech pathologists and doing some Internet research, he speculates that Bush might suffer from a condition not yet recognized as a formal medical diagnosis called central auditory processing disorder (CAPD):
What all the experts seem to agree on is that Bush exhibits "phonological" problems, that is, he has trouble breaking apart and putting together the discrete sounds that make up words. That could explain why the President tortures the language so often. And his clowning around could have been a way to compensate.
Such a syndrome also could explain other characteristics. The nicknames -- he dubbed ex-Treasury Secretary O'Neill "Pablo", for example -- could be a device to help with name retrieval. The infrequency of news conferences could reflect the difficulty someone with CAPD would have in a press-conference setting. ... [T]he noise and distractions of a news conference would make the kind of focus Bush may need very difficult. "A news conference would be his worst nightmare," says [speech-language pathologist Kathy] Hosty. "You can't control the barrage of different communications styles."
ONE OF THE GUYS. Bush's penchant for talking about good and evil and for saying countries are either with us or against us in the war on terrorism may also reflect a learning disorder. His professed distaste for nuance could stem from an inability to process the complex sides of an issue. "To analyze that, you have to analyze the language," says Bonnie Rattner, a speech and language pathologist in San Mateo, Calif.
2 comments:
how comforting it is to know that the Liberator of Peoples, Hammer of Righteousness, etc., may suffer from "an inability to process the complex sides of an issue." seems like a minimum requirement to be Liberator, Hammer, or just even plain old POTUS.
Or maybe he's just modeling himself on Jefferson Davis, who was also rigid, self-righteous and arrogant. :) :) - Bruce
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