Okay, folks…Word Bites #24 (“Feces/Fetus/Bush-talk”) was a hoax. (And a joke.) I know it, and you want to believe it anyway. But one should always check source (“Snopes," “Urban Legends”), as I do, even though sometimes what isn’t true is or should be. Moreover, it all depends on what `is’ is. And so the joke’s---on us? (Or the true believers?) In these times, one so easily lapses into “Missiles-of-Mass-Destruction-Speak” because that’s what we hear so repeatedly from our Orwellian White House in an effort to make True Believers and Right Christians of us all. Then again, the biggest hoax of all sits in the White House and if we can remove him with laughter come November, let do it! -nb

Urban Legends and Folklore
G.W. Bush Refers to Fetus as 'Feces' in Right-to-Life Speech

Netlore Archive: Did President G.W. Bush really say in a speech to a right-to-life group that 'all human beings begin life as a feces'?
Description: Email joke
Circulating since: July 2004
Status: False
Analysis: See below
Email example contributed by Clark V., 13 July 2004:

Subject: Bush mis-speaks in an interesting way.

Is this who we want representing our country?

NEWSWEEK reports that President Bush, appearing before a right-to-life rally in Tampa, Florida on June 17, stated: "We must always remember that all human beings begin life as a feces. A Feces is a living being in the eyes of God, who has endowed that feces with all of the rights and God-given blessings of any other human being." The audience listened in disbelief as the President repeated his error at least a dozen times, before realizing that he had used the word 'feces" when he meant to say "fetus."

Comments: False. President Bush has been known to commit verbal gaffes on occasion, but nothing on the order of mistaking the word "feces" for "fetus" a dozen times in a row in a single speech. I'm not sure it's even humanly possible.

As it happens, Bush was in Tampa, Florida on June 16, 2004, the day before this event supposedly took place, but according to the White House press log he gave no speeches in Tampa on June 17.

No such news item appeared in Newsweek, nor any other venue, for that matter.

It is clearly a joke.

From: "Norb Blei"
Date: Mon, 26 Jul 2004 09:52:57 -0500
To:
Subject: WORD BITES #24 7.26.04

Word BITES

#24

JULY 26, 2004

n.b.

NEWSWEEK reports that George W. Bush, appearing before a right-to-life rally in Tampa, Florida on June 17, stated: "We must always remember that all human beings begin life as a feces. A feces is a living being in the eyes of God, who has endowed that feces with all of the rights and God-given blessings of any other human being." Bush repeated his error at least a dozen times, before realizing that he had used the word 'feces" when he meant to say "fetus."