by JAMES TARANTO
Friday, September 21, 2007 4:03 P.M. EDT

Today's Video on WSJ.com: Brendan Miniter on Greenspan and other critics of GOP fiscal policy.

Dead Metaphor?
Here is a story to brighten your weekend: Early this afternoon we received an email from one of our most loyal readers. We'll withhold his name, because our purpose here isn't to make him look silly. Suffice it to say that he writes us several times a week, his nickname for President Bush is "Chimpy," and the following message, which we quote verbatim, is actually quite a bit more temperate than his usual fare:

No wonder the entire world sees this fool for the complete moron that he is.

I now see that his supporters, such as your august self, have truly, really, fundamentally no shame and no sense of embarrassment. Bush makes us all look like dopes--after all he was elected twice (ooops, make that stole the election twice--my bad)

If only his idiot gaffs were the worst of it...

He is truly worthless as a president and as a man!

Our correspondent sent us a link to a blog called First Draft, in which someone styling himself "Holden Caulfield" says of the president, "Christ, what a dumbass," and links to the following Reuters dispatch:

Nelson Mandela is still very much alive despite an embarrassing gaffe by U.S. President George W. Bush, who alluded to the former South African leader's death in an attempt to explain sectarian violence in Iraq.

"It's out there. All we can do is reassure people, especially South Africans, that President Mandela is alive," Achmat Dangor, chief executive officer of the Nelson Mandela Foundation, said as Bush's comments received worldwide coverage. . . .

"I heard somebody say, Where's Mandela?' Well, Mandela's dead because Saddam Hussein killed all the Mandelas," Bush, who has a reputation for verbal faux pas, said in a press conference in Washington on Thursday. . . .

References to his death--Mandela is now 89 and increasingly frail--are seen as insensitive in South Africa.

So, what did President Bush actually say? Here's the quote in context, from the White House transcript:

Part of the reason why there is not this instant democracy in Iraq is because people are still recovering from Saddam Hussein's brutal rule. I thought an interesting comment was made when somebody said to me, I heard somebody say, where's Mandela? Well, Mandela is dead, because Saddam Hussein killed all the Mandelas. He was a brutal tyrant that divided people up and split families, and people are recovering from this. So there's a psychological recovery that is taking place. And it's hard work for them. And I understand it's hard work for them. Having said that, I'm not going the give them a pass when it comes to the central government's reconciliation efforts.

In this context, it is clear that the literal meaning of "Where's Mandela?" is "Where is the Iraqi who will play the role in his country that Mandela played in postapartheid South Africa?" This was a pithy metaphor, not an "embarrassing gaffe."

Now, how did Reuters get the story wrong? There are, it seems to us, three explanations:

• Stupidity. The reporter was so bone-headedly literal-minded that he simply did not understand the rhetorical device Bush was employing.
  
  
• Laziness. The reporter wasn't actually at the press conference and didn't bother to check the context of the quote.
  
  
• Dishonesty. The reporter knew full well that Bush was speaking metaphorically and deliberately twisted his meaning in order to fit the stereotype that Bush "has a reputation for verbal faux pas."

In the case of the particular Reuters dispatch "Caulfield" links to, laziness is the most likely answer. It's datelined Johannesburg, so the reporter surely was not at the press conference. But ultimately the explanation for the "worldwide coverage" this "gaffe" has received is either stupidity or dishonesty. Some journalist either failed to understand or deliberately misrepresented Bush's remark. And the joke is on people like our Bush-hating correspondent, who gullibly eat this stuff up.

Too Pro-American for the Times
New York Times TV critic Alessandra Stanley doesn't like "The War," PBS's new World War II documentary, because it's too pro-American. Seriously, this is from her review:

World War II didn't happen just to us.

But it would be hard to glean that from Ken Burns's 7-night, 15-hour tribute to the greatest generation that ever bought war bonds, joined the Marines or tightened rivets on a B-17 Flying Fortress.

The London blitz, Stalingrad, Bergen-Belsen and the Warsaw uprising are parentheses in this respectful, moving and meticulously illustrated anthology of small-town lives turned upside down by what one elderly veteran calls "a necessary war."

The war was necessary, but is this approach?

The tone and look of Mr. Burns's series, which begins Sunday on PBS, is as elegiac and compelling as any of his previous works, but particularly now, as the conflict in Iraq unravels, this degree of insularity--at such length and detail--is disconcerting. Many a "Frontline" documentary has made a convincing case that the Bush administration's mistakes were compounded by the blinkered thinking of leaders who rushed to war without sufficient support around the world or understanding of the religious and sectarian strains on the ground. Examining a global war from the perspective of only one belligerent is rarely a good idea.

And what's all this about Iraq? Usually the Times is at pains to claim that Iraq has nothing to do with al Qaeda, but Stanley seems to believe it has something to do with Nazi Germany.

Times book critic Michiko Kakutani has another gem of a review today, this one of Jeffrey Toobin's new book, "The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court":

Mr. Toobin--a former assistant United States attorney who is now a staff writer at The New Yorker and senior legal analyst at CNN--uses his familiarity with the law not to deliver a partisan brief (as he did with "A Vast Conspiracy," his ham-handed 2000 book on the Clinton scandals) but to illuminate the dynamics of the Supreme Court and to situate key decisions made by the court within a political, social and historical context.

But then comes this:

The story of Justice O'Connor, who helped tip the Bush v. Gore case in favor of President Bush and whose 2005 decision to retire (to spend more time with her ailing husband) would give the president a crucial seat to fill, is in many ways Shakespearean. Mr. Toobin writes that "the hiring of John Ashcroft, the politicized response to the affirmative action case, the lawless approach to the war on terror, and the accelerating disaster of the war in Iraq all appalled O'Connor." He says she regarded the Terry Schiavo case as "the latest outrage from the extremists who she believed had hijacked her beloved Republican Party" and adds that she was deeply distressed over the administration's efforts to undermine judicial independence.

It's a good thing Kakutani told us that Toobin's book is not "a partisan brief," because her description of the book's contents could easily have led us to think otherwise.

Is Mike Kinsley Human?
The question is prompted by the Slate founder's latest Time magazine column, in which he accuses critics of MoveOn.org's McCarthyite attack on Gen. David Petraeus of insincerity:

Goodness gracious. oh, my paws and whiskers. Some of the meanest, most ornery hombres around are suddenly feeling faint. Notorious tough guys are swooning with the vapors. The biggest beasts in the barnyard are all aflutter over something they read in the New York Times. . . . All across the radio spectrum, right-wing shock jocks are themselves shocked. How could anybody say such a thing? It's horrifying. It's outrageous. It's disgraceful. It's just beyond the pale. . . .

Whatever your interpretation of the ad, all the gasping for air and waving of scented handkerchiefs among the war's most enthusiastic supporters is pretty comical.

It's all phony, of course. The war's backers are obviously delighted to have this ad from which they can make an issue.

Let's assume Kinsley is right that the ad's critics are "delighted to have this ad from which they can make an issue." It does not follow from this that their outrage is phony. To the contrary, it seems far more likely that their sincere outrage at the ad informed their analytical judgment that MoveOn had gone too far and thereby hurt its own cause, a realization that in turn delighted them.

Kinsley is treating emotional reactions as if they were logical propositions. He thinks he has caught his ideological opponents in a contradiction by pointing out that they are (or at least have reason to be) happy about one aspect of a situation, as if that precluded their being unhappy about another aspect of it.

Clever as he is, Kinsley appears to lack the slightest understanding of how emotions work. For his wife's sake, we hope he's faking it.

HillaryCare Catch-22
The Associated Press reports on a Hillary Clinton health-care speech:

"It is long past time that Americans and the richest of all countries realize that health care is a right and not a privilege," Clinton said at a labor forum in Chicago. "And that goes especially for people who work hard every single day."

First she claims that "health care is a right and not a privilege," but then she qualifies this statement by saying "that goes especially for people who work hard every single day." The implication of the latter statement is that the right to health care is contingent on working hard "every single day."

But just the other day, the New York Post quoted Mrs. Clinton as drawing a different link between work and medicine:

The former first lady said she could envision a day when "you have to show proof to your employer that you're insured as a part of the job interview--like when your kid goes to school and has to show proof of vaccination.

"At this point, we don't have anything punitive that we have proposed," she said.

Well, that's reassuring. In Hillary Clinton's America, it seems, health insurance will be like experience: You can't get a job without it, and you can't get it without a job.

'A Very Interesting Past'
"A top campaign adviser to Hillary Rodham Clinton says Rudy Giuliani's stormy personal life will be fair game should he win the Republican nomination for president," the New York Post reports:

"There's a lot that the rest of the country is going to get to know about Mayor Giuliani that the folks in New York City know," said Tom Vilsack, former Iowa governor and a co-chairman of the Clinton campaign.

"I can't even get into the number of marriages and the fact that his children--the relationship he has with his children--and what kind of circumstances New York was in before Sept. 11," Vilsack said during an interview on NY1 last night.

"There are lot of issues involving Mayor Giuliani . . . He's got a very interesting past."

Giuliani is just lucky Mrs. Clinton doesn't practice the politics of personal destruction.

Do What I Do, Not What I Did
"Presidential candidate" Bill Richardson has put out a press release dealing with one of America's biggest problems--and of course we don't mean terrorism:

Richardson today vowed to confront the American obesity crisis head-on as President. Governor Richardson made the pledge during a speech to the Obesity Society's Public Policy Conference "The Obesity Challenge: What the Next President Should Do" in Washington, D.C.

As the Santa Fe New Mexican reported in January, Richardson has already confronted his own obesity crisis:

Gov. Bill Richardson, whose presidential prospects will be featured today on national television, had a new star quality when he strode into Capitol chambers last week to deliver his State of the State speech.

Gone--almost--were the wobbly jowls of last year's address to the Legislature. . . . The new and sleeker governor, whose weight has fluctuated up and down over his political career, was looking practically buff in his well-fitting, conservative pinstripe suit. . . .

Neither the governor's staff nor the coach who is supervising his weight-loss plan would say last week how many pounds Richardson has lost, but he's clearly taken off at least 25 to 30 pounds and is cutting a slimmer figure.

Since late last summer, Richardson has been working with Debbie Kolkmeyer, program director at Southwest Endocrinology Associates in Albuquerque, on an individualized food plan.

On most days, he drinks one to four high-protein Optifast shakes and eats one or two nutritious, low-calorie meals.

Bully for Richardson for getting his weight under control. But why do so many politicians--we're thinking Mike Huckabee and Mike Bloomberg as well as Richardson--think it's the government's job to enforce the healthy habits they adopted on their own?

This is one of the reasons we admire President Bush. He used to drink too much, and he stopped, but he's not trying to stop the rest of us from enjoying a tipple.

Turning the World Upside-Down
"Sea ice around Antarctica has seen unusual winter expansions recently, and this week is near a record high," the New York Times reports. Does this mean global warming is a myth? It would be premature to draw any conclusions, the Times points out:

Scientists acknowledged that both poles were extraordinarily complicated systems of ice, water and land, and that the mix of human and natural influences was not easy to clarify.

And at the same time as Antarctic ice was at a record high, Arctic ice was at a record low. What's interesting is that the Times led with the Arctic's record low ice rather than the Antarctic's record high ice. This is just bad news judgment: The Times had a man-bites-dog story but played it as yet another environmental-dogma-bites-man story.

Guess His Faith--Take 2
Many readers were unable to vote yesterday in our online poll. To recap, the New York Post reported that 17-year-old Yaseen Chowdhury "was arrested yesterday after placing fliers in his teachers' mailboxes asking them to convert to Islam" and allegedly making threats after being caught. The Post added that "the student's religion was not immediately known."

We asked readers to vote on Chowdhury's religion, but SnapPoll.com, the site we used to set up the poll, went down sometime yesterday, apparently not to return till this morning. So we're including the poll in today's column to make up for missed votes. (If you've already voted, it won't let you do so again.)

Life Imitates 'The Simpsons'

• "The politics of failure have failed. We need to make them work again."--"Kang" in "Treehouse of Horror VII," originally aired Oct. 27, 1996
  
  
• "Senate Democrats Lose on Iraq Pullout Plan"--headline, Reuters, Sept. 21, 2007

Life Imitates the Onion

• "It Is Wrong to Throw Things"--headline, Onion, Sept. 1, 1999
  
  
• "Man Hits Wife in Head With an Onion"--headline, Associated Press, Sept. 20, 2007

We'd Rather Have an Elf Who Distills Scotch
"New High-Tech Sprite Makes Its Own Ice When Opened"--headline, The Consumerist, Sept. 20

Meet Us There for a Drink in 2107
"Zeeland Pizzeria Gets City's First Liquor License in a Century"--headline, Kalamazoo (Mich.) Gazette, Sept. 21

'It Tases Just Like Chicken!'
"Police Taser Man With Chicken in Car"--headline, Associated Press, Sept. 18

It Better Not Be Wide
"Anglican Gay-Bishop Stance is Put to a Test"--headline, Chicago Tribune, Sept. 20

One Album Should Be Enough to Do That
"Kanye West Bests 50 Cent in Album Sales"--headline, Associated Press, Sept. 20

Great, Now We Can Quit Recycling
"Maine Market Will Safeguard the Earth"--headline (ninth item), Providence Journal, Sept. 21

But Not as Good as Sex
"HPV Vaccine Better Than Thought, Maker Says"--headline, Associated Press, Sept. 20

News You Can Use

• "Buyer Beware: Shopping Can Lead to More . . . Well . . . Shopping"--headline, press release, Stanford Graduate School of Business, Sept. 18
  
  
• "Divorce Threat Persists Throughout Marriage"--headline, USA Today, Sept. 19
  
  
• "If You See It, You'll Eat It, Expert Says"--headline, CNN.com, Sept. 21

Bottom Stories of the Day

• "Canvas Bag Would Tout City Shops"--headline, Contra Costa Times (Walnut Creek, Calif.), Sept. 20
  
  
• "Lakeland Student Illegally Passes School Bus"--headline, Mirror (Lakeland College, Sheboygan County, Wis.), Sept. 20
  
  
• "Forum: Dems Push Health Care, Bash Bush"--headline, Quad-City Times (Davenport, Iowa), Sept. 21
  
  
• "Democrats Fail to Pass Anti-War Bill"--headline, Associated Press, Sept. 21

Fancy Meeting You Here--II
They met online, where he called himself "Prince of Joy," and she called herself "Sweetie." Their real names were Sana and Adnan. "The pair [each] thought they had found a soulmate with whom to spend the rest of their lives," reports Metro.co.uk:

[They] poured their hearts out to each other over their marriage troubles. . . . Sana, 27, said: "I was suddenly in love. It was amazing, we seemed to be stuck in the same kind of miserable marriages. How right that turned out to be."

Finally they decided to meet in person, and they discovered that they were married to each other:

When it dawned on her what had happened, she said: "I felt so betrayed."

Adnan, 32, said: "I still find it hard to believe that Sweetie, who wrote such wonderful things, is actually the same woman I married and who has not said a nice word to me for years."

Too bad they didn't like piña coladas.

(Carol Muller helps compile Best of the Web Today. Thanks to Ed Lasky, Matt Honohan, Monty Krieger, Michael Segal, Dan Stirling, Naomi Iaulus, Charlie Gaylord, Jim Moran, Dan Hanchey, Martin Mix, Paul Dyck, Richard Haisley, Steve Biddle, Tim Willis, Paul Goodrich, Damieon Dorsner, Geoff Hazel, Jeff Baird, Paul Strada, Jeffrey Techentin, John Ford, Bruce Bartlett, Steve Grohovsky, Patrick Bedwell, James Chen, Steve Prestegard, Craig Tannahill and Daniel Foty. If you have a tip, write us at opinionjournal@wsj.com, and please include the URL.)

Today on OpinionJournal:

• Review & Outlook: Jeb Bush criticizes his successor's hurricane insurance plan.
• Kim Strassel: Can President Bush hold the line on spending?
• Peggy Noonan: If only they'd listened to Greenspan! And they might have, if only he'd spoken clearly.
• The Journal Editorial Report: Tune in this weekend for an interview with John Bolton and discussions of HillaryCare and Mukasey.

And on the Taste page:

• Mary Kissel: Passage to India: Adam Smith in a Delhi market.
• Sam Schulman: Experts try to predict the future without knowing the past.
• Matthew Weiner: Finding room for conservatives in interfaith dialogues.