Make the pie higher!

Some of you, Gentle Readers, may have already seen the well-known "poem" created from snippets of President Bush's various malapropisms by a Washington Post editorial writer. It was recently forwarded around my place of work, and I've seen it elsewhere. It's quite entertaining; however, being skeptical of the veracity of such things, I turned to the font of all knowledge in such things, the good folks at the Urban Legend Reference Pages.

Somewhat to my surprise, they provide not only an imprimatur of its authenticity, but a detailed analysis of where each phrase came from.

Sadly, the one phrase I thought had real poetic power, "I am a pit bull on the pantleg of opportunity", was the only one for which they could not find a source.

Playing devil's advocate for a moment, I will point out that some of the phrases in the "poem", although they sound quite bizarre when taken out of context, actually do make a kind of sense in the context of their original appearance. Consider for example "Knock down the tollbooth!" Nonsense, huh? It originally appeared in a speech as follows:

"It's not fair!" Bush exclaims. "It's a tollbooth on the road to the middle class, and I intend not only to reduce the fees but to knock the tollbooth down."

Perhaps not the most elegant phrasing, but it does make a kind of sense as a rhetorical parallel to the "tollbooth" reference in the preceding clause.

"I think we all agree, the past is over" turns out to have been said in the course of politically making-up with an internal Republican Party rival after a bitter primary fight. Again, not elegant, but it sort of makes sense in context.
Likewise with "I know that the human being and the fish can coexist."

However, I'm not even going to try to justify mangled verbiage such as "misunderestimate", "How many hands have I shaked", or "Is our children learning". With those phrases, you're on your own, Mr. President.