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Author Topic: Did George Bush really say . . .?
Wilf Day
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Babbler # 3276

posted 05 November 2005 04:42 AM      Profile for Wilf Day     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
"The trouble with the French is that they don't have a word for entrepreneur" as that great intellectual George Bush is famously quoted as saying. But when did he say it, if he ever did?

George W. Bush was supposed to have said to Tony Blair, "The problem with the French is that they have no word for 'entrepreneur.'" After this appeared, though, a spokesman for the Prime Minister denied that Bush ever said anything of the sort.

The source was Shirley Williams, who claimed "my good friend Tony Blair" had recently regaled her with this anecdote in Brighton. But then Lloyd Grove of The Washington Post received a call from Alastair Campbell, Blair's director of communications and strategy. "I can tell you that the prime minister never heard George Bush say that, and he certainly never told Shirley Williams that President Bush did say it," Campbell told The Post. Covering for Bush again?

But maybe it's true:

quote:
Does the French language have a word which refers to this class of people, on whom the whole wealth of the world depends? It doesn’t. The French do not have a word for ‘entrepreneur’, and, if you are one of those who believe that he really did make that remark, President Bush was absolutely correct.

Once you point this out, your opponent’s final sally will probably be to bleat, “But isn’t ‘entrepreneur’ a French word?”

It is a French word, but it is also an English word, as I have described above. The French word merely means ‘contractor’ . . .



From: Port Hope, Ontario | Registered: Oct 2002  |  IP: Logged
Crippled_Newsie
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posted 05 November 2005 06:16 AM      Profile for Crippled_Newsie     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Originally posted by Wilf Day:
"The trouble with the French is that they don't have a word for entrepreneur" as that great intellectual George Bush is famously quoted as saying.

That's the first Bushism I've heard that actually skirts Yogi Berra territory.


From: It's all about the thumpa thumpa. | Registered: Oct 2004  |  IP: Logged
Hinterland
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Babbler # 4014

posted 05 November 2005 06:34 AM      Profile for Hinterland        Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
This is as interesting as asking if the Germans have a word for Schadenfreude. The English use of the word has principally the meaning of nemesis or retributive justice, whereas in German, it also conveys the very real, and very base, sense of feeling joy at the sorrow of others...along the lines of thinking "good thing it's you who's suffering, and not me.". That's not really the way the term is used in English all that often, and, similarly, that's not the way the word entrepreneur is used in English. Another word like that is contre-temps. English-speaking people use that word to mean all kinds of negative happenstance (some people even think it means a dispute) but in French, it really just means "delay that had an unfortunate consequence."

Similarly, the term fucké in French doesn't mean "fucked." It only means disturbed, or off-kilter, in a very benign way. For example, if you notice and point out a bit of dirt on someone else's face, you can say "t'es fucké lŕ"

That George Bush is a moron is indisputable. Why so many people go out of their way to apologise and find deeper meaning in his cretinousness is a motivation that escapes me completely.


From: Québec/Ontario | Registered: Apr 2003  |  IP: Logged
Hephaestion
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posted 05 November 2005 01:58 PM      Profile for Hephaestion   Author's Homepage        Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
It is a French word, but it is also an English word, as I have described above. The French word merely means "contractor" ...


It's rather ironic that the word "contractor" was used to define "entrepreneur", because what the Yanquis refer to as a "contractor" in Iraq is widely known to the rest of the world as a "mercenary". Words can be such slipperly, malleable things, hmmmm?

(And btw, I think Blair's aide was lying through his teeth to cover for Bush AND to cover up Blair's indiscretion in repeating it.)

[ 05 November 2005: Message edited by: Hephaestion ]


From: goodbye... :-( | Registered: Dec 2003  |  IP: Logged
'lance
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Babbler # 1064

posted 05 November 2005 02:02 PM      Profile for 'lance     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
Why so many people go out of their way to apologise and find deeper meaning in his cretinousness is a motivation that escapes me completely.

So many people have hitched their wagon to his (falling) star. Admitting, even to themselves, that he's a careless dolt would destroy their little worlds.

What surprises me is that the Snopeses chose to believe Alastair Campbell. He's a known liar. That's how he makes his living, and Lord Hutton be double-damned. In the run-up to the Iraq War, Campbell was to Blair as Cheney was to Bush.


From: that enchanted place on the top of the Forest | Registered: Jul 2001  |  IP: Logged
Fidel
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Babbler # 5594

posted 07 November 2005 04:23 AM      Profile for Fidel     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
"If the terriers and bariffs are torn down, this economy will grow." — Prescott Bush's grandson, G.W.Bush, in Jan. 2000

"We're enjoying sluggish times, and not enjoying them very much." — Prescott Bush's son, G.H.Bush Sr, in 1992

Ivy League schmivy league, they're both terrorist threats to the English language.


From: Viva La Revolución | Registered: Apr 2004  |  IP: Logged
Boom Boom
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posted 25 June 2008 01:34 PM      Profile for Boom Boom     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
Don't know where else to put this... An Honor That Bush Is Unlikely to Embrace

excerpt:

SAN FRANCISCO — Reagan has his highways. Lincoln has his memorial. Washington has the capital (and a state, too). But President Bush may soon be the sole president to have a memorial named after him that you can contribute to from the bathroom.

From the Department of Damned-With-Faint-Praise, a group going by the regal-sounding name of the Presidential Memorial Commission of San Francisco is planning to ask voters here to change the name of a prize-winning water treatment plant on the shoreline to the George W. Bush Sewage Plant.

The plan, naturally hatched in a bar, would place a vote on the November ballot to provide “an appropriate honor for a truly unique president.”


From: Make the rich pay! | Registered: Dec 2004  |  IP: Logged
jrootham
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posted 25 June 2008 01:40 PM      Profile for jrootham     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
The best part is that the people who run the plant think it's an insult to the plant.
From: Toronto | Registered: Jun 2001  |  IP: Logged
Stephen Gordon
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Babbler # 4600

posted 25 June 2008 03:31 PM      Profile for Stephen Gordon        Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
quote:
“You got a bunch of guys drunk who came up with an idea,” Mr. Epstein said

Apparently they're smarter drunk than GWB sober.


From: . | Registered: Oct 2003  |  IP: Logged
jrootham
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Babbler # 838

posted 25 June 2008 04:29 PM      Profile for jrootham     Send New Private Message      Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 
And this is a surprise to whom?
From: Toronto | Registered: Jun 2001  |  IP: Logged
Stephen Gordon
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Babbler # 4600

posted 25 June 2008 04:31 PM      Profile for Stephen Gordon        Edit/Delete Post  Reply With Quote 

From: . | Registered: Oct 2003  |  IP: Logged

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