White House prepares ‘phonetic guide’ for Bush

[Richard Tafoya]

Think Progress:
http://thinkprogress.org/2007/09/25/white-house-prepares-phonetic-guide-for-bush/

As President Bush spoke to the United Nation’s General Assembly this morning, “a marked-up draft of the president’s speech popped up on the U.N.’s website” that included “phonetic spellings of some names and countries (http://blogs.usatoday.com/ondeadline/2007/09/white-house-ups.html), and the cellphone numbers for Bush speechwriters.” White House Press Secretary Dana Perino got annoyed when a reporter asked “if the president has trouble pronouncing some country’s names,” calling it an “offensive question” before saying, “it was taken down and there’s nothing more to say about it.” Blake Hounshell has some of the phonetic guides (http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/node/6408) over at Foreign Policy:
• Kyrgyzstan [KEYR-geez-stan]
• Mauritania [moor-EH-tain-ee-a]
• Harare [hah-RAR-ray]
• Mugabe [moo-GAH-bee]
• Sarkozy [sar-KO-zee]
• Caracas [kah-RAH-kus]

[DoubleEdgeSword]

.......[DUM-ass]

[pinky]

ID-ee-ut.

[lions1mew]

MO-rawn

Jebus Christmas ... please tell me WHY people thought this man should run a country? Please? Anyone?

[SparkleHugs]

Very good question, I have been asking myself this for 7 years now.

[mistert]

Seriously, how the hell did he even get re-elected??

[SparkleHugs]

He used fear as a tactic to scare the hell out of the common stupid folk in America and made them believe that if he wasnt re-elected then America would be attacked again.

I think America would have been better off with another foreign attacker than with Bush as a President.

[pinky]

MO-rawn

Jebus Christmas ... please tell me WHY people thought this man should run a country? Please? Anyone?
Chad (not tiger rascal) was the only one who knew, and they found him hanging in Florida. :greyno:

[*Candy*]

Low-rd
Say-v
Uh-s

[DoubleEdgeSword]

Chad (not tiger rascal) was the only one who knew, and they found him hanging in Florida. :greyno:

You're a clever one, Claire. :p lmao!!

[lions1mew]

I just now got that *slaps forehead* LOL I've been overworked and stressed ... brain cells not functioning properly ... that's my story and I'm sticking to it :]

[Venisenvy]

wow...people are taking the whole bash on bush too far. I mean i have no problem with this. When I am practicing my bible readings for sunday during mass the names have the phonetic spelling next to them and it helps out a lot.

[db44]

I agree with Luis. If it was a guide for words like nuclear, I'd laugh about this. With the names listed, there are some I don't think I'd know how to say. Would all of you have known it was "geez" and not "gihz" in Kyrgyzstan? We send a Pronunciation Guide every day via our service, and these probably would all be included if they were in the news on a regular basis.

[pinky]

I'll give you Kyrgyzstan (I didn't know how to pronounce that) and maybe Harare.

But the rest are easy, and anyone casually aware of international affairs would, or should, know how to pronounce them.

He's an embarrassment.

[db44]

Then again, we have at work sometimes people who need to know how to pronounce "Jeter."

[pinky]

That's because the Yankees are unimportant. :p

International relations is not.

[db44]

No, it's because Bush unfortunately isn't the only idiot out there.

[pinky]

That's painfuly obvious to anyone who deals with other human beings.

But the Yankees are truly unimportant. :nod:

[db44]

Maybe to those as intelligent as Bush... :tongue:

[lions1mew]

*Bill Maher voice*

Bush is intelligent???

:p