Thursday, 05/02/02

The first Bond movie saddled with Pierce Brosnan came out around Thanksgiving my first year in college. I went to see it with a gaggle of people and emerged unhappy across the board, but reserving special outrage for the moment where Bond, sitting calmly in M's office, misprounounces the word "nuclear" like Ronald Reagan. I'm still mad about it, six years later. Do real Brits even make that mistake?

So I'm watching The West Wing last night when the key scene comes along near the end -- the new Russian president sends a sneaky back-channel message indicating he's not a bad guy on nuclear proliferation. Everybody pronounces the word "nuclear" right, but then the Rob Lowe character, who has the most overachieving diction on television, earnestly quotes from the Russion memo, "together in partnership, we must stem the tide of nuclear poliferation". And if that's not bad enough, the Nobel prize-winning POTUS, smartest man in the room, follows up ten seconds later with "we've been trying to get non-pleriferation on the agenda since forever".

I couldn't decide if these were goofs or a subtle shout-out to tonguetied presidents; Jen, to her decisive credit, had no doubts it was intentional. 11:31PM «

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