May 13, 2004
Damn the inadvertent neologisms, full speed ahead
This is perhaps already an old chestnut to many people, but today marked the first time I heard this quote from George W. Bush. It is truly the Holy Grail of weird Dubya malapropisms:
It's in the interest of -- uhh -- uhh, long-term peace in the world that we -- uhh -- work for a free and secure and peaceful Iraq. A peeance, freeance secure Iraq in the midst of the Middle East will have enormous historical impact.
Can't believe Bush actually said the nonsense words "peeance" and "freeance"? There's an MP3 of it here (scroll down a bit or just do a text search for "peeance"; it's not a word that comes up so often).
The thing that makes this quote so very special is that I kind of have no idea what he was actually trying to say. "Peaceful, free, secure Iraq," maybe? Still, that is so far from what he actually said...it's inexplicable. Maybe he's just inventing street slang on the fly, like Snoop Dogg.
Posted by Francis at 06:10 PMA late speculation, but I think this could be transcribed as: "A pea and s—free and secure Iraq..." Makes more sense than anything else I could come up with.
Posted by: David. at May 17, 2004 02:06 PMOh, like he got "peaceful" crossed with "free" in his brain, didn't get through through the next word, and tried to correct himself? That's actually a reasonable theory, but then why is there that long pause between the /s/ sound at the end of "freeance" and the /s/ sound at the beginning of "secure"?
Posted by: Francis at May 17, 2004 02:11 PM