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“Obama Grammar: Using the President’s Bloopers to Improve Your English” was written by Harvard-educated historian William Proctor. (Provided by Inkslingers Press)

Story Topics

• Politics
• Barack Obama
• William Proctor
• Christopher J. Christie
• Rick Santorum

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GAFFE-OLOGY

Strategery, misunderestimated, refudiate: former President George W. Bush and Sarah Palin have been chastised by journalists and academes for their inventive language and occasional grammatical gaffes for years. Now it is President Obama’s turn. Here comes “Obama Grammar: Using the President’s Bloopers to Improve Your English,” a new book that parses Mr. Obama’s command of the language, or lack thereof.

“The first wordsmith is, in fact, an occasional stem-winder who is grammatically challenged,” says author and Harvard-educated historian William Proctor, who pored over 3,000 pages of the president’s official speeches and remarks. He’s convinced that Americans — particularly students — can learn a little something from Mr. Obama.

“His speeches reveal that at this point, he is simply not in the same rhetorical-grammatical league as a Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy or Ronald Reagan,” Mr. Proctor says. “Even as we explore Mr. Obama’s errors, we should not lapse into smug, finger-pointing complacency. His mistakes should serve as a reminder to the rest of us that we, too, may need to clean up our technical language skills.”

The author also sets the record straight on presidential pronunciation bloopers of several persuasions and provides the “Great Obama Grammar Face-Off.” From Inkslingers Press, the ebook is available for $10 on Kindle, via Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

FAT CHANCE

The prospect of New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie as a presidential candidate must vex the liberal media. From out of nowhere, a lavish discussion of Mr. Christie’s weight has erupted in the press, providing a veritable smorgasbord for journalists intent on proving that (a) Mr. Christie would be physically incapable of holding the job, (b) voters would be turned off by a First Fat Guy and (c) chubby people can’t control themselves and therefore can’t control the country.

Hm. Consider that our 27th president, William Howard Taft, tipped the scales at 332 pounds and later served as chief justice of the United States. Also remember that 75 million adult Americans are obese, a sizable potential voting bloc. An online Los Angeles Times poll, in fact, revealed that 70 percent of the respondents said Mr. Christie’s weight didn’t matter.

Meanwhile, Media Research Center analyst Kyle Drennan waggishly suggests that President Obama promotes a “morbidly obese government.” And Mr. Christie, ever the gracious hefty he-man, simply dismisses the caterwaul.

“Lay off Chris Christie’s weight. It might just help his chances,” advises New Republic contributor Paul Campos, a University of Colorado law professor. “While there’s no question that cosmetic issues matter a lot in contemporary politics, and that being fat is almost certainly a net negative for a presidential candidate, the contemporary politics of fat, and of fat politicians, are far more complex than they once were.”

CANDIDATE TRACKER

The campaign trail goes forever onward for Republican presidential hopefuls, like something out of a J.R.R. Tolkien novel. Saturday events of note: Texas Gov. Rick Perry ventures to the home of Republican “kingmaker” Ovide LaMontagne in New Hampshire while Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum speak at the National Federation of Republican Women convention in St. Louis. Elsewhere in the next 48 hours:

California: Gary Johnson

Connecticut: Mr. Santorum

Iowa: Mr. Gingrich, Mr. Santorum

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