I Think He's Starting To Get It

Everybody at the G20 summit is shaking hands with each other... but nobody will shake President Bush's hand. It's not even subtle. Can you imagine what it must be like when the cameras aren't around?



As much as I despise The President, I do feel sorry for The Man: I believe he came into office with good intentions, and of course the vast majority of his day-to-day decisions were correct, and I'm even willing to believe that many of the originally-right-but-turned-wrong decisions he made were at least in good faith. No, I can't forgive him for the knew-it-was-wrong-but-did-it-anyway decisions, but at the same time, look at this video: This is a man, I think, who is suddenly realizing that he has achieved the immortality that all men can only dream of... but this immortality will be as an object of loathing and ridicule.

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UPDATE:

CNN offers up a correction. Duly noted.



It's obvious what happened: Some CNN video clerk noticed the "no handshake" clip and gave it to his supervisor, who showed it to the director, who during a commercial break, previewed it for Rick Sanchez, who said, "Wow! Look at that! Let's get that on the air!" and then 30 seconds later during broadcast, you get clip #1.

This is a perfect example of the two ever-present fatal flaws of 24-hour news: One, that news makes it into a broadcast while necessary details are still being learned; and two, lacking those necessary details, 24-hour news anchors feel obliged to offer their opinions as a substitute. At least we live in a country where competing news outlets will fact check one another, or (as here, happily) even fact check themselves.

My apologies to President Bush for promoting an incomplete and misleading version of events on my blog. I do still stand by my commentary above, but it obviously no longer bears a relation to the video clip it accompanies.