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- guardian.co.uk,
- Friday October 27 2006 18:32 BST
"One of the things I've used on the Google is to pull up maps."
Thus spoke George Bush in an interview with MSNBC this week. "The Google." Titter. No doubt, even now, the president is joining many thousands of his fellow internetsters reviewing the latest accident to come out of his mouth on the YouTube.
What's it all about, this "the Google"? A knowing, ironic flourish, along the lines of the now-ubiquitous "interweb"? Or is Bush conferring the company with the authority that the definite article brings, as with some football teams and newspapers? Or could this be a coded message of goodwill to the French, who are, apparently, keen on their definite articles?
Or is it just that he doesn't know what he's talking about?
Probably we shouldn't file this latest mistake alongside the president's manifold crimes against the English language (of which the most artful compendium was that poem from a few years back).
No, the "the Google" incident seems to me more akin to his inability, during campaigning for his first term, to identify the Pakistani leader in greater detail than as "the general". It's simply that he does not know very much. He's out of touch with technology, just like he's out of touch with that foreign affairs malarkey.
It is funny, but it isn't charming. We can only hope that Bush, when he gets a minute, explores the Google a bit further. He might learn something.
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