White House Aide Defends Bush Decision to Delete Grammar Tests In Nation's Schools

By Patricia Jefferson

Saturday February 24 4:12 PM ET

WASHINGTON (Rooters) - A senior White House aide sprang to the defense of President George W. Bush 's decision to delete the study of grammar in the nation's schools on Saturday, accusing the media of being ``hyper-critical'' about parsing and picking apart his words and insisting on the teaching of grammar in primary and secondary schools across the land.. Bush's occasional creative use of the English language was well documented during the election campaign and his move to the White House has intensified the scrutiny, leading to some widely publicized syntactical slips this week. ``They (Americans) don't care what you think about grammar, they care about what he's going to do that affects their lives,'' Mary Matalin, counselor to Vice President Dick Cheney and assistant to Bush, said in a CNN television interview, "so it's only common sense to apply that thinking to Amerian education in general." Hence, while Bush, the Education President, plans to hold the nation's children to the education grindstone through his nationally mandated testing program, he has decided that it would be hypocritical to insist that they be tested on grammar, not knowing it himself.

After watching videotaped excerpts from Bush's Thursday news conference, his first formal White House session with the media since taking office on Jan. 20, Matalin bristled at an interviewer's suggestion that the public might expect more from their president than ``a third-grade grammatical error.'' Discussing the invitation he and first lady Laura Bush extended to British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his wife, Bush told reporters: ``Laura and I are looking forward to having a private dinner with he and Mrs. Blair Friday night.'' Earlier, Bush seemed unable to choose between singular and plural as a different set of pesky pronouns tripped him up. Asked what advice he would give politically active members of his family, Bush replied: ``My guidance to them is, behave yourself. And they will.'' "Hyper-critical doesn't begin to describe the (media) ... to parse it and pick it apart in the way that it has is discordant with the American people,'' Matalin said on the program "Evans, Novak, Hunt & Shields." "America has had it with grammar," Matalin continued," so Mr. Bush has decided that fair is fair. Since the American people don't care about Mr. Bush's lack of grammatical abilities, Mr. Bush does not want to be a hypocrite by insisting that America's children learn grammar as part of the nation's curriculum in its primary and secondary schools."

Coming just a month into Bush's presidency, the news conference was "designed to show and telegraph we'll be giving many,'' Matalin said, enabling Americans to `"understand what it is we're doing, not so the grammarians in the press can have a field day.'' When the ridicule that former Vice President Dan Quayle endured for famously putting an ``e'' on the end of ``potato'' was raised, Matalin cut in with: ``Are we going to talk about Mr. Bush's plans for American education?'' Although an official White House transcript of the 30-minute question-and-answer session rendered almost every word verbatim, it did not contain Bush's inadvertent reference to cocoa -- instead of coca -- production in Colombia, a slip that gave rise to a host of jokes. ``I think the media handled it with good humor,'' White House spokesman Ari Fleischer quipped to reporters. His pun was too subtle for most. Good Humor is the name of a popular chocolate ice cream bar. The media's ``Bushism'' watch went on high alert earlier this week when the president delivered the line, ``You teach a child to read and he or her will be able to pass a literacy test'' at an education event in Townsend, Tennessee. The slip was reproduced in newspapers and magazines around the country. NBC's late-night television host Jay Leno awarded it ''The George W. Bush Quote of the Day.''

At that point, according to Matalin, Mr. Bush called together President Cheney, Sec. of Education Paige, and various advisors to consider the educational need for grammar. The outcome of that meeting led to Mr. Bush's decision to delete grammar from the nation's education curriculum. As Mr. Bush said, "Nearly a third of our college freshmen find he must take a remedial course before they are able to even begin regular college level courses. Although education is primarily a state and local responsibility, the federal government is partly at fault for tolerating this abysmal results. The federal government currently does not do enough to reward success and sanctioning failure in our education system.An enterprise works best when responsibility is placed closest to the most important activity of these enterprise, when those responsible is given greatest latitude and support, and when these responsible is held accountable for producing results. Accordingly, in all honesty I can't not ask pre-college students to know what I can't learnt myself, particularly when the American people and my aides tell me that it doesn't matter. So that are the reasons I have decided to delete the study of grammar from all of the nation's primary and secondary schools. Not only will this decision allow me to continue to be a role model to the nation's children, it will bring further dingity to the White House. So help me God."

-- bwahahaha!! (what@moron.com), February 26, 2001

Answers

"Rooters" ain't even got on Onion's list as exceptable.

-- Carlos (riffraff@cybertime.net), February 26, 2001.

Ms. Matalin is right, America has had it with grammar. I blame it on our having to endure the #(!#^&*? diagramming of sentences.

By the way, the source "Reuters" is misspelled.

-- David L (bumpkin@dnet.net), February 26, 2001.

David,

Rooters is intentionally misspelled. If you'll reread the last paragraph I think you may discover this is a joke, although I'll admit, it IS hard to tell the difference from the real thing!

-- bwahahaha!! (bush@illiterate.dumbo), February 26, 2001.

"You teach a child to read and he or her will be able to pass a literacy test"

Having a college degree doesn't mean a whole hell of a lot does it? Money can buy anything. Didn't his mother correct his grammer when he talked? Geeze

-- Cherri (jessam5@home.com), February 26, 2001.

Thanks, bwahahaha!!, but I did realize the article was a joke. My comment about the misspelling was an overly subtle (and evidently feeble) attempt at humor.

-- David L (bumpkin@dnet.net), February 27, 2001.

I'm Da Edjakayshun Presidunce!

-- (no@more.grammar), February 27, 2001.

.

-- (one@more.time), February 27, 2001.

Dear bush,

I am a chinese , all of the people from china have ready to fight with Bush , and we will dovate our life in any time, come on and welcome .fark you.

-- kevin.yu (kevinyjc@alibaba.com), April 28, 2001.