I guess I would have caught this before Mark Steyn if I paid more attention to Slate.  Jacob Weisberg bravely spoke Truth to Power for the last eight years by writing his Bushism Of The Day column, in which he would catch our president torturing syntax and waterboarding vocabulary.  Now that power has passed to the Democrats and Barack Obama lives in the White House, where has Weisberg decided to focus his Truth to Power efforts?

Why, on George W. Bush, of course:

“This is my maiden voyage. My first speech since I was the president of the United States and I couldn’t think of a better place to give it than Calgary, Canada.”—As reported by the Associated Press, Calgary, Canada, March 17, 2009

In the first place, I’m not really sure what’s wrong with that sentence.  I might have said “Calgary, Alberta,” as I would not say “Minneapolis, America”, but that’s hardly an egregious error, either.  If that’s really the level to which Weisberg has to stoop to exercise his particular strain of Bush Derangement Syndrome, he needs to find a hobby, preferably one with soft implements and rounded edges.

Besides, no one at Slate seems to have informed Weisberg that Bush stopped being President two months ago.  It was in all the newspapers; maybe Weisberg was too busy scraping the bottom of the barrel for Bush quotes he could scorn to notice.  Bush isn’t the story any more, which we all saw this week when President Barack Obama compared AIG to a terrorist suicide bomber and made a tasteless comment about the Special Olympics.

So when will we see the Obama-ism of the Day at Slate?  Or does Slate want to proudly announce its irrelevancy on a daily basis by indulging its primary BDS sufferer indefinitely?

Update: After thinking about it for a while, I decided to check Slate’s own style guide by doing a search for references to the city of Sydney in Australia.  It’s the capital of New South Wales, and so should be referenced as Syndey, NSW … at least according to Weisberg’s criticism here, right?  Well, judge for yourself:

• Joel Achenbach, June 2008: Sydney, Australia.
• Travelbox, April 2007: Sydney, Australia
• Jack Shafer, March 2009: Sydney, Australia
• David Plotz, August 2000: Sydney, Australia

And the piece de resistance:

• Jacob Weisberg, Bushisms, March 2009: Sydney, Australia.

Slate articles with “Sydney, NSW”: 0.  Slate articles with “Sydney, New South Wales”: 0.