Une fois n'est pas coutume — A break from the serious (not really):
The Pope is on a visit to Washington, and President Bush takes his guest out for an afternoon on the Potomac, sailing on the Presidential yacht, the Sequoia.
They're admiring the sights when, all of a sudden, the Holy Father's hat (zucchetto) blows off his head and out into the water. Secret Service guys start to launch a boat, but President Bush waves them off, saying, "Wait, wait. I'll take care of this. Don't worry."
Bush silently bows his head for a moment, mutters a few inaudible words, takes a final look towards the heavens, steps over the yacht's railing, sets his feet on the surface of the water, walks out to the floating zucchetto, bends over, picks the wet hat up, turns around, walks back to the yacht, and climbs back aboard.
Amid stunned silence and wide-eyed frozen faces, he hands the dripping hat to the Pope.
The next morning, editorials asking roughly the same rhetorical question appear in the New York Times, the St. Louis Post Dispatch, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, the Boston Herald, the Buffalo News, the Milwaukee Sentinel-Journal, the Minneapolis Tribune, the Denver Post, the Albuquerque Journal, the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, The Guardian, BBC Online, Le Monde, Libération, Le Figaro, Der Spiegel, and Stern: "How could Americans vote for a man who can't even swim?!"
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William (who signs himself "W" at Merde In France) is an expat American who's lived in France for the past 20 years.
He's recently closed that blog and has moved to several (!!) new ones including http://no-pasaran.blogspot.com/ and http://miffedagain.blogspot.com/
I'm wondering why he's "diluting the brand" of Merde in France - perhaps he's testing the waters with a couple of blogs that don't contain a bad word (merde = sh*t en français) in their title
(he periodically gets angry letters from the home-grown French about his "attitude" regarding la Fwance
(or perhaps the French are trying to shut him down with their nebulous "anti-hate" laws - never trust such laws, we've got them in Canada and the scope ever grows such that they no longer actually regulate "hate" but in fact regulate speech - this is advice coming from a pretty tolerant guy all around)
MrO
The Pope is on a visit to Washington, and President Bush takes his guest out for an afternoon on the Potomac, sailing on the Presidential yacht, the Sequoia.
They're admiring the sights when, all of a sudden, the Holy Father's hat (zucchetto) blows off his head and out into the water. Secret Service guys start to launch a boat, but President Bush waves them off, saying, "Wait, wait. I'll take care of this. Don't worry."
Bush silently bows his head for a moment, mutters a few inaudible words, takes a final look towards the heavens, steps over the yacht's railing, sets his feet on the surface of the water, walks out to the floating zucchetto, bends over, picks the wet hat up, turns around, walks back to the yacht, and climbs back aboard.
Amid stunned silence and wide-eyed frozen faces, he hands the dripping hat to the Pope.
The next morning, editorials asking roughly the same rhetorical question appear in the New York Times, the St. Louis Post Dispatch, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, the Boston Herald, the Buffalo News, the Milwaukee Sentinel-Journal, the Minneapolis Tribune, the Denver Post, the Albuquerque Journal, the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, The Guardian, BBC Online, Le Monde, Libération, Le Figaro, Der Spiegel, and Stern: "How could Americans vote for a man who can't even swim?!"
---
William (who signs himself "W" at Merde In France) is an expat American who's lived in France for the past 20 years.
He's recently closed that blog and has moved to several (!!) new ones including http://no-pasaran.blogspot.com/ and http://miffedagain.blogspot.com/
I'm wondering why he's "diluting the brand" of Merde in France - perhaps he's testing the waters with a couple of blogs that don't contain a bad word (merde = sh*t en français) in their title
(he periodically gets angry letters from the home-grown French about his "attitude" regarding la Fwance
(or perhaps the French are trying to shut him down with their nebulous "anti-hate" laws - never trust such laws, we've got them in Canada and the scope ever grows such that they no longer actually regulate "hate" but in fact regulate speech - this is advice coming from a pretty tolerant guy all around)
MrO
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