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From WNYC in New York, this is NPR's On the Media. I'm Bob Garfield. And I'm Brooke Gladstone,

and this is President Bush.

Anybody who is in a position to serve this country ought to understand the consequences of words.

My, oh my. We didn't weigh in when the president changed the rhetorical direction of his war policy

by declaring that he'd, quote, never been stay the course.

We didn't comment when Vice President Cheney appeared to liken waterboarding to a dunk in the water.

Mostly we cover the media, and mostly the media chewed on those howlers for a time and then gulp them down and do course.

But the media can't stop masticating on this latest

liberal gaff like a Washington monument-sized snossage.

It was a botched joke about the president.

Senator John Kerry meant to say that if you didn't study, if you were intellectually lazy,

you could get us stuck in Iraq. But he screwed it up and left out the word

...