September 14, 2004

THEY SAID THE SAME ABOUT REAGAN (via The Mother Judd):

A medical cause for 'Bushisms'? (Alex Beam, September 14, 2004, Boston Globe)

[W]hy does Bush sound stupid? One doctor thinks he shows signs of "presenile dementia," or an early onset of Alzheimer's disease.

This summer, Joseph Price, a self-described "country doctor" in Carsonville, Mich., was reading a long article in The Atlantic about Bush's speaking style. Author James Fallows alluded to Bush's malapropisms and to speculation that Bush had a learning disorder or dyslexia. But those conditions generally manifest themselves in childhood. Furthermore, Fallows wrote, "through his forties Bush was perfectly articulate."

Dr. Price's children happened to have given him a daily tear-off calendar of "Bushisms" for Christmas. "They are horrible, but they are also diagnostic," Price says. When he read that Bush had spoken clearly and performed well while debating Texas politician Ann Richards in 1994, Price thought: "My God, the only way you can explain that is by being Alzheimer's."


One need merely note that the Doctor's own last statement is a Bushism.

Posted by Orrin Judd at September 14, 2004 10:17 PM
Comments

Maybe Beam isn't the best guy to be talking about Alzheimer's. The Blogosphere had lots and lots of fun in April of 2002 with his negatively slanted article about Weblogs for The Globe, in which he thought that Norwegian libertarian Bjorn Staerk's love-blog to Stalin was the real thing, and not an April Fool's joke.

Posted by: Ed Driscoll at September 14, 2004 10:57 PM

Let's see:
Bush is/was a cokehead (Kitty Kelley)
Bush was AWOL from TANG (DNC/RAther/Dems)
Bush has alzheimers (Beam)
50+ more days of this stuff?

Posted by: AWW at September 14, 2004 11:08 PM

No, 50 + 28 + 31 + 3*365 + 366 + 19 = one thousand, five hundred eighty-nine more days of this. This takes into account the fact that 2008 is a leap year, and assumes ( a risky assumption, of course) that journalists shut their yaps about Bush's malapropisms promptly on January 20th 2009.

Posted by: joe shropshire at September 15, 2004 1:21 AM

What can you say about a doctor who is willing to try to diagnose someone without conducting a thorough examination?

If it sounds like a duck...

Posted by: Roy Jacobsen at September 15, 2004 10:25 AM

Don't forget that Alex Beam, who wrote this story, was the guy who was completely pants-ed by bloggers a couple years ago.

http://travellingshoes.blogspot.com/2004_09_12_travellingshoes_archive.html#109526778299276358

Posted by: H.D. Miller at September 15, 2004 1:24 PM

In my misspent youth as a partisan leftist, I laughed tears about this anecdote told in Dr. Sacks' The Man Who Mistook His Wife for A Hat:

It's 1984, the president is making a campaign stop in a senior citizens' home. Smiling and gladhanding, Reagan accosts one resident:

"Do you know who I am?"

The fellow looks him up and down and replies:

"No, but if you go to Reception they will tell you."

I can't help myself, I still think it's funny.

Posted by: Eugene S. at September 15, 2004 3:32 PM

Eugene:

Of course it's funny--Reagan would have told it himself.

Posted by: oj at September 15, 2004 3:41 PM
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