Quote:
Originally posted by Penske_Account
Is was rude in the sense that it was designed to be exclusionary to W and to point out that while Chirac understood english, Bush was illiterate in the French.
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Yes, as a technical matter, this is rude. However, normal etiquette is somewhat suspended in journalism. In this case, where all 3 did have a common language, the mitigating factors for asking the Q in French (buttering up your immediate subject, looking suave & intercontinental) are probably outweighed by those against (pissing off your other subject, looking biased & elitist), but that's a judgment call.
Then again, Bush
is illiterate in French, and I think everyone already knows it, so I'm not sure I see much of an "attack" in this case. It will only help him with 75% of America that is also illiterate in French and doesn't like the implication that this makes them ignoramuses (presuming that about 5% of the population speaks something close enough to intelligible French to enable them to have understood the question themselves, and 20% of the rest aren't annoyed by implication that they are somehow "illiterate").
