Learn a Second Language, Listen to the Prez

This from The Borowitz Report...

BUSH'S STATE OF THE UNION ADDRESS TO BE SIMULCAST IN ENGLISH
President Hopes to Reach Broader Audience, Aides Say

For the first time since he was elected President of the United States, George W. Bush's State of the Union address tonight will be simulcast in English, the White House confirmed. With the president's approval ratings sagging, the decision to simulcast the speech in English was widely seen as an attempt by the president to make an appeal to a broader audience. "The majority of people in this country are English speaking, and quite frankly, we can't afford to ignore them any longer," one senior aide said. "Hopefully, by doing the English simulcast, we'll be reaching out to a lot of those folks." Once the decision was made earlier in the month to launch the historic first English simulcast of a speech by President Bush, then began the hard work of translating the text of the address from Mr. Bush's language into English. Davis Logsdon, a professor of linguistics at the University of Minnesota, was one of several scholars approached to do the translation who ultimately quit in frustration. "The problem is that the language the president speaks, by most measures, is not a language at all," Professor Logsdon said. Still, the White House remains guardedly optimistic about tonight's simulcast, and aides said that if all goes as planned they might soon offer English simulcasts of press briefings by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. Elsewhere, former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein stormed out of his courtroom today, got a good look at what was going on in the streets of Baghdad, and quickly hurried back in.