To be honest, I’m glad that the media is no longer focussing on dialect and conversational tone as if it were an indicator of intelligence and relevance. I just hope they remain this enlightened under the next Republican president, or in regard to Republican governors of northwest states.

That said, this response from the President’s press conference at the G20 conference reminded me of a great skit from Second City, in which John Belushi plays Craig, a college student trying to pass an oral test on the Treaty of Brest Litovsk:

“The uh… social, the economic, and the political conditions which… existed… prior to… the war. Differed greatly from the… social, the economic, and the political conditions which existed… after the war. Now… France… France had nothing to do with this particular treaty, goes parallel to it… Russia…”

I’ll tell you what, Craig, why don’t you start with the provisional government up until the treaty and its ramifications.

“The… uh let me rephrase that… we must all realize… that the… provincial government… provisional, that the provisional government was, indeed, provisional…”

It’s a great skit. You can find it on The Second City: Backstage at the World’s Greatest Comedy Theater^•, though I don’t recommend paying full price. This and some of the other skits (such as The Glass Menagerie as rewritten by David Mamet) are hilarious.