September 14th, 2005

Filed under:
Politics
15 Comments »

Leader of Free World Needs to Go Wee

I’m sure everybody’s read about this by now, but this is hilarious. President Bush was photographed writing a peculiar note to his Secretary of State. I believe the text reads as follows:

I think I MAY NEED A BATHroom break? Is this possible

It’s a strange request, certainly, but I’m more worried about the President’s capitalization and punctuation. Is he sure he needs to go?

UPDATE: I agree that it’s very likely a forgery. If you check out the President’s chicken-scratch in this note (from this BBC article), it’s quite different. It is amusing that both Yahoo and Reuters published it.

UPDATE #2: Er, my inner skeptic may be wrong. The photo looks pretty legit after all. As that article notes, Bush may not have written all of the visible text. Thanks to Filmgoerjuan for, uh, debunking my debunking.

Comments: 15 Responses so far

Ryan
September 15th, 2005
1:38 am

Perhaps he was really trying to say in capitals that he needs a bath… ’cause he stinks! ;)

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double-plus-ungood
September 15th, 2005
6:59 am

I think if you note the kerning and the font, you’ll have to agree that it’s a forgery.

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declan
September 15th, 2005
7:32 am

I am reminded of that scene from Dirty Rotten Scoundrels where during dinner Steve Martin asks permission to go to the toilet and then pee’s in his pants.

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mark
September 15th, 2005
7:56 am

yay al-reuters….

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richard
September 15th, 2005
8:09 am

I saw this image on Reuters, but it still feels like a photoshopped image… like the upside down goat book that achieved life in the wake of Sept 11…

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Anonymous
September 15th, 2005
8:48 am

If you agree it’s a forgery, why don’t you take the entry off your site and apologize for spreading false information.

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Darren
September 15th, 2005
8:56 am

Anonymous: A few reasons:

a) Because I want to be transparent, so that there’s a history of the inaccuracy.

b) Becauase it hasn’t been definitively proven as a forgery.

Finally, I’d hope that people wouldn’t treat this site the way they treat, say, CNN (or, heh, Yahoo). After all, this is a personal site, so I make no promise of only dealing in facts (though, in truth, I mostly do).

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donna
September 15th, 2005
11:07 am

It’s not a forgery, it’s CODE! That’s why some words are capitalized strangely, he’s trying to tell them to CLEAN IRAQ OFF THE MAP!

Or something like that.

Mmm, conspiracy theories.

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Rob Cottingham
September 15th, 2005
11:15 am

I’m finding it hard to buy the forgery suggestion. Reuters has the photo here; everyone from the BBC to Editor and Publisher are reporting it as valid.

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filmgoerjuan
September 15th, 2005
11:20 am

This article about the photo has information about the photographer who took it and says that Reuters is saying it is real.

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Johnny K
September 16th, 2005
1:22 am

This story made it onto Irish news programmes last night!

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donna
September 16th, 2005
8:34 am

It was on Jon Stewart, too. :)

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Rob Cottingham
September 16th, 2005
11:31 am

Ahem. It seems that somebody did the debunking of the debunking a full five minutes before filmgoerjuan. (With all due respect to filmgoerguan, of course.)

– Rob “Glory Hog” C.

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James
September 20th, 2005
10:37 pm

Forgery or not, it’s hardly surprising given the source. He may need to go, he may not, he may have been paying attention to what he was doing, he may not, he may be an idiot … (no option there)

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JerkinGerkin
September 21st, 2005
4:17 pm

i thougt aliens don’t need no bathroom brakes …

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