Encyclopedia Brown and the case of the Smirking Chimp

[Cocoa]

how did Encyclopedia Brown know that President Bugs was lying in the face of third-grader Jordan?

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/12/20011204-17.html


THE PRESIDENT: Hi, Patricia; how are you? How old is Patricia?
Q Five, and Jordan is in 3rd grade. And Jordan has a question, if I could give him the microphone.

THE PRESIDENT: You bet. Your mother is relaying the Mike to you, Jordan.

Q One thing, Mr. President, is that you have no idea how much you've done for this country. And another thing is that, how did you feel when you heard about the terrorist attack? (Applause.)

THE PRESIDENT: Thank you, Jordan. Well, Jordan, you're not going to believe what state I was in when I heard about the terrorist attack. I was in Florida. And my Chief of Staff, Andy Card -- actually, I was in a classroom talking about a reading program that works. I was sitting outside the classroom waiting to go in, and I saw an airplane hit the tower -- the TV was obviously on. And I used to fly, myself, and I said, well, there's one terrible pilot. I said, it must have been a horrible accident.

[troublemaker]

1. The movie's 3-D effect wouldn't work for a man with one eye.

So he wouldn't be wearing the 3-D glasses.

Is that the answer?

[troublemaker]

2. Sorry... I just didn't seem proper for the first answer to be right.

No suspense that way.

Encyclopedia Brown knew that even a chimpanzee can't watch TV shows that aren't on. The only televised footage of what Bush so vividly "saw" was first aired many hours afterwards.

It's somehow fitting that Bush's confabulated memory makes him out to be an even bigger ghoul than the correct version. When he *heard* the news that a passenger jet had flown into the WTC he said or thought, "That's one bad pilot." Okay, that's a nasty thing to say but not an extraordinary thing to think. (It would be a pretty poor piece of flying) But in Bush's partially imaginary memory he *WATCHES* a passenger jet fly into the WTC in a gigantic fireball... he actually *WATCHES* at least 500 people incinerated in one second, and he thinks or says, "That must Be one bad pilot."

What a psycho!

(This 'invented memory' phenomenon is commonplace yet jurors continue to find eye-witness testimony compelling and persuasive. One more argument against capital punishment.)