Singing The Same Song
‘IMAGINE President Bush as Keith Harris and Tony Blair as Orville. [As John Lennon said, it isn’t hard to do.] Clear your throat and prepare to sing along.
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| ‘She’s only bloody gone and swiped my wallet’ |
‘I wish I could fly up to the sky, but I can’t.’
‘You can.’
‘I can’t. I wish I could see what folks see in me, but I can’t.’
‘You can.’
‘I can’t.’
‘Look, Tony.’
‘Yes.’
‘Nothing that you can say will change how I feel today. I know that we’ll never part. Now hear what I’m saying, Tony.’
‘Yes?’
‘Who is your very best friend?’
‘You are.’
And that, dear reader, is what we call a special relationship as yesterday Bush and Blair indulged in some high-profile, not to mention extraordinarily expensive, mutual back-slapping.
However, the Telegraph is the only one of the four broadsheets to lead with Mr Bush’s actual speech to an invited audience at the Banqueting House last night.
The other three concentrate on the embarrassing lapses in security that saw a Mirror journalist employed in Buckingham Palace for two months prior to the US President’s visit.
However, the Independent is not the only paper to find itself pleasantly surprised by Bush’s speech.
‘Whoever has been coaching George Bush in oratory deserves the Presidential Medal of Freedom (and a congratulatory glass of champagne),’ writes Mary Dejevsky.
The speech itself was delivered with due gravitas, she says, ‘but also with the full authority of his office and not a few excursions into wry humour that bespoke the greater comfort he now clearly feels when speaking in public’.
The Guardian, however, still takes issue with the message, especially the way in which ‘his administration continues to subvert or bypass collective decision-making whenever that suits its purpose’.
‘No amount of sugar coats this bitter pill,’ it says. ‘No amount of folderol, flummery or flattery makes it easier to swallow.’
A bit like a particularly argumentative pretzel, then.’
Posted: 20th, November 2003 | In: Broadsheets Comment | TrackBack | Permalink
