-Caveat Lector- I still think the poor guy's handlers just got carried away in a routine torture session... forgot the cardinal rule, leave no visible marks... now THEIR handlers are probably getting THEIR jollies in a few tough love sessions... molli
Publishing Partners Ha'aretz, Kathimerini, Italy Daily, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, JoongAng Ilbo, The Daily Star Services Currency Converter Weather Sponsored Sections Classifieds Help Search Advanced Search Articles by Day Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Weekend World Tries to Get Pretzel Tale Straight Marjorie Miller Los Angeles Times Service Thursday, January 17, 2002 LONDON Was it a Qaida plot? An Enron end run? Or was it, as President George W. Bush said, just a wayward pretzel that briefly felled the leader of the free world? With two dogs as the only witnesses to the presidential fainting spell, the international press has been left to speculate about what happened - and whether Mr. Bush can watch television and chew pretzels at the same time. "George Bush attempted to taste the biscuit with his attention focused on a football game - a combination of actions that, it appears, proved difficult," said the Greek daily To Vima. The media responded to the pretzel pratfall with jokes, queries about Mr. Bush's mental and physical health, and detailed explanations of the knotted American-style pretzel. "Though not to everyone's taste, they are not considered a health hazard," The Independent of London informed readers dryly. True to form, the Germans consulted pretzel experts, the French contemplated Americans' "complicated relationship with food" and the Italians looked to the religious roots of the pretzel. The Saudis worried that the scare would prevent Mr. Bush from focusing attention on what they called Israel's oppression of the Palestinians, while Britain offered the president a few backhanded compliments. The incident proved that Mr. Bush is "a man of the people," Britain's Daily Telegraph said in an editorial. "This is exactly the sort of accident that befalls Homer Simpson, night after night." The paper also was cheered by the fact that the leader of the international war on terrorism still has time for Sunday football. "He has shown himself, once again, to be completely in tune with the tastes and instincts of the people he leads," the editorial said. Of course, most Americans did not end up prone with facial bruises at the end of the game - at least not from pretzels. The Independent labeled the official story "Hard to Swallow." "Was he poisoned perhaps?" the British paper asked. "Has the stress of fighting the war on terrorism while fending off inquiries about the collapse of his friend Ken Lay's Enron overwhelmed him? Was there maybe some family tiff?" It concluded that the "vanquisher of al Qaida may have met his match." Germany's mass-circulation Bild, the daily of choice for blue-collar Germans, also asked if there wasn't more to the story: "Has the president's alcohol problem been taken up again?" Saudi Arabia's English-language Arab News said that while no one believed there was anything seriously wrong with Mr. Bush, his pretzel mishap had led to speculation about the impact of an ailing president on the world. "These are particularly dangerous times internationally," the paper said in an editorial, adding, "In order to bring together a coalition of support within the Arab world, the White House had to focus its attention more constructively on Israel's oppression of the Palestinians." If Mr. Bush's unusual collapse was "a symptom of more serious medical problems," the paper said, "we can be absolutely sure that, lacking any clear direction from a troubled White House, Washington's foreign policy will click back on its traditional Zionist track." "Palestinians will continue to choke on Israeli aggression while the U.S. president may again choke on a typical Yiddish pretzel," it said. No, no, said the Italian press. The American-style pretzel was invented by a 16th-century German monk as a reward for children who memorized their prayers, La Repubblica newspaper said. The word derives from the Latin prex, or prize, it claimed. Leave it to the British tabloids to challenge the Italians on Latin. The Daily Mail declared that the word "pretzel" came from pretiola - Latin for little reward. The dough is folded to look like a child's arms in prayer, and the three holes represent the Holy Trinity of the Christian Church. And it was German and Dutch immigrants who took the pretzel across the Atlantic when they settled in Pennsylvania in 1710, the paper said. Russian newspapers, perhaps reflecting the more somber tone of the Vladimir Putin era, restrained themselves. The daily Komsomolskaya Pravda ran a detailed diagram of Mr. Bush's anatomy, with the location of the pretzel blockage marked with a star. "Bush's organism, although weakened and unconscious, managed to cope with the indisposition," the daily Gazeta said. "The organism first rejected the pretzel but later swallowed it and digested without mercy." Printer Version For Related Topics See: Americas Subscriptions E-mail Alerts About the IHT : Privacy & Cookies : Contact the IHT Copyright © 2001 the International Herald Tribune All Rights Reserved Terms of Use | Contributor Policy <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance—not soap-boxing—please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'—with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds—is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. 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