Claim: President George W. Bush proclaimed, «The problem with the French is that they don’t have a word for entrepreneur.»
Status: False.
Origins: Yet another
«George W. Bush is dumb» story has been taken up by those who like their caricatures drawn in
stark, bold lines. According to scuttlebutt that emerged in the British press in July 2002, President Bush, Britain’s Prime Minister Tony Blair, and France’s President Jacques Chirac were discussing economics and, in particular, the decline of the French economy. «The problem with the French,» Bush afterwards confided in Blair, «is that they don’t have a word for entrepreneur.»
The source was Shirley Williams, also known as the Baroness Williams of Crosby, who claimed «my good friend Tony Blair» had recently regaled her with this anecdote in Brighton.
Lloyd Grove of The Washington Post was unable to reach Baroness Williams to gain her confirmation of the tale, but he did receive a call from Alastair Campbell, Blair’s director of communications and strategy. «I can tell you that the prime minister never heard George Bush say that, and he certainly never told Shirley Williams that President Bush did say it,» Campbell told The Post. «If she put this in a speech, it must have been a
joke.»
This is far from the first time Bush has been made the butt of a jibe meant to showcase what some perceive as his less than stellar intellectual abilities. Without straining our memories too hard, we can come up with three other instances we’ve chronicled on this site. In the summer of 2001, the joke of the moment centered upon a supposed study that had resulted in the ranking of Presidential IQs, with George W. Bush being pegged as the Chief Executive who scraped the bottom of the intelligence barrel. In December 2000 it was a fake Nostradamus quatrain which pontificated that the «village idiot» would win the 2000 Presidential election. And in the spring of 2002, it was the story of Bush’s waving at Stevie Wonder that set folks to chortling up their sleeves.
Stories that illustrate this widely believed intellectual shortcoming will always waft after George W. Bush because they seemingly confirm what many already hold as true about this public figure, that he’s not the brightest fellow that’s ever been. It is human nature to revel in yarns that the hearer at some level agrees with, thus tales of this sort will always fall upon appreciative ears.
Barbara «ears of corn» Mikkelson
Last updated: 23 September 2007
Sources:
- Fitchett, Joseph. «The Global Class: Word for It.»
- The International Herald Tribune. 11 July 2002 (p. 18).
- Grove, Lloyd. «The Reliable Source.»
- The Washington Post. 10 July 2002 (p. C3).
- Malvern, Jack. «Bush and Blair.»
- The [London] Times. 9 July 2002 (p. 18).
- Smith, Liz. «Stovepipe Dreams.»
- Newsday. 12 July 2002 (p. A13).
By Barbara Mikkelson
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George Bush — doing a convincing imitation of a complete twerp
Thank you, Mr George W Bush Jr, for that pearl of wisdom, up there with “Africa is a nation that suffers from incredible disease” and “I couldn’t imagine someone like Osama bin Laden understanding the joy of Hanukkah”. You need to take more water with it, George.
Actually, I’m not of the school of thought which maintains that Georgie is a total retard. Surely, surely you can’t possibly get as far as president of the US if you have the IQ of a cockroach? I’m inclined to think he was a victim of bored soundbite-writers – OK guys, today’s challenge is to get him to say “I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully”. Bottle of Californian rosé and a Big Mac for anyone who manages it. Let’s face it, if you were president would you waste your time wading through all that stuff in advance? No, you’d go to the pub and read it off the autocue on the day.
Sarah Palin. Oh God, no. Please.
Barack Obama, while looking from here like a much more sensible choice of president, really doesn’t have the same comedy value. Anyone nostalgic for that sort of thing will have to wait for Sarah Palin next time round, although leaving comedic potential aside, we really need to hope for all our sakes that the mad bint doesn’t actually win. Still, with any luck her campaign will provide grist to the mill for About.com’s Sarah Palin Insane-O-Matic Quote Generator.
Fans of loony US politics will meanwhile just have to make do with the population’s reaction to the suggestion that healthcare for people other than hedge fund managers and the CEOs of multinational companies might be a worthwhile idea. ‘Socialism by the back door!’ they thunder. ‘Unconstitutional!’ ‘How dare you!’. Errrr ….. OK then, off you go and die of something eminently treatable, see if I care. Weirdos.
Stalin. Rather a bad idea by any standards.
Europeans generally find the American deployment of the word ‘socialism’ as a debate-closer a bit baffling, partly because they tend to use it to cover anything which isn’t an every-man-for-himself capitalist free for all and partly because we’ve seen the real thing in operation in most of its recent incarnations, from Ken Livingston-stylee pinko through New Labour to out-and-out Stalin, so we more or less see it as just another option, and one with good points and bad ones. (Really quite bad ones, in Uncle Joe’s case, though apparently his fellow Georgians are now getting all nostalgic for his reign of terror and describing him as a ‘strong leader’. Which goes to show just how wilfully self-deluded people can be.)
But I digress (something for which I am not covered by our subversive universal healthcare system, unfortunately). According to our good friend Wikipedia, entrepreneur is originally a loan word from French, which would rather seem to piss on George’s strawberries. A literal translation gives you ‘between-taker’, which suggests that it originally meant middleman – not quite what Dubya had in mind, I should think. But the meaning has clearly changed over the years, and Wikipedia tells us that the modern entrepreneur is “an individual in possession of a new enterprise … and assumes significant responsibility for the in herent risks and the outcome”. One imagines that this definition is much more to George’s liking.
Brits in France will often tell you that the French don’t do much work, aren’t entrepreneurial, don’t encourage small business, would all rather work for the state ….. blah etc. Which is odd really, considering that I meet far more independent business owners here than I ever did in the UK. What’s more, none of them looks particularly destitute – our former neighbours who have the little supermarket have just built a big house and bought a whopping 4×4, the one-man-band electrician I used to deal with for First Choice has taken on staff and opened a shop and JC’s former boss at Marché U has just sold his business for several million. Still, maybe they’re all arms dealers and the whole legit business thing is just a front for laundering money. Titter ye not – we had ETA terrorists holed up in a resort in the Maurienne last summer. It all happens round here, you know.
Our most recent local recruits to the whacky world of smaill business are a bunch of enterprising teenagers who have launched what can only be described as a rickshaw service, though they like to call it a vélotaxi.
Rickshaw ride, anyone?
The youngsters (or more likely someone’s Dad) have welded a couple of bikes together two abreast and then attached a two-wheeled carriage arrangement to the back. The carriage boasts an awning and a wooden bench made comfy with a few brightly coloured cushions, and the whole contraption is powered by various healthy-looking 15(ish)-year-old rickshaw-wallahs who cheerfully circle the town, honking adenoidally on the old fashioned horns attached to their handlebars. Tourists (who, as noted before, leave their brains behind when going on holiday) seem delighted with a rickshaw tour of the town, and wot not of the fact that the whole thing was clearly cobbled together in someone’s garage and is probably of rather dubious roadworthiness.
No doubt a dozen people will be along at any moment to leave sniffy comments about irresponsible parents, health ‘n’ safety, insurance, other road users, yada, drone, zzzzzzz etc. And if that’s you, stop ask yourself exactly what it is that’s stifling the go-getting entrepreneuial spirit here, alleged French laziness or the bossy busybody attitude of people just like you?
U.S. President George W. Bush supposedly said to UK Prime Minister Tony Blair at a G8 Summit in July 2002:
“The problem with the French is that they don’t have a word for ‘entrepreneur.’”
“Entrepreneur” is an English loan word from the French. There is no credible evidence that Bush said the line, however.
Wikiquote: George W. Bush
George Walker Bush (born 6 July 1946) is an American politician and businessman who served as the 43rd President of the United States from 2001 to 2009, and the 46th Governor of Texas from 1995 to 2000. He is the eldest son of Barbara and George H. W. Bush. He married Laura Welch in 1977 and ran unsuccessfully for the House of Representatives shortly thereafter. He was elected president in 2000 after a close and controversial election, becoming the fourth president to be elected while receiving fewer popular votes nationwide than his opponent. He is the second president to have been the son of a former president, the first having been John Quincy Adams.
(…)
Disputed
The problem with the French is that they don’t have a word for “entrepreneur.”
. Shirley Williams, Baroness Williams of Crosby, described this as a remark to Tony Blair in a discussion of the French economy during the G8 Summit, according to Jack Malvern (9 July 2002), “Bush and Blair, The Times. Alastair Campbell, Blair’s director of communications, later said that Blair never heard Bush say this and never told Baroness Williams that he said it. See Lloyd Grove (2002-07-10) “The Reliable Source,” Washington Post.
Wiktionary: entrepreneur
Etymology
Borrowing from French entrepreneur.
Noun
entrepreneur (plural entrepreneurs)
1. A person who organizes and operates a business venture and assumes much of the associated risk.
2. A person who organizes a risky activity of any kind and acts substantially in the manner of a business entrepreneur.
3. A person who thrives for success and takes on risk by starting his own venture, service etc.
Google Groups: uk.gay-lesbian-bi
Brighton
Lyn David Thomas
5/19/01
On Sat, 19 May 2001 23:38:57 BST, “Richard G” wrote:
>On Sat, 19 May 2001 13:42:05 BST, “Kapitano”
>appended:
>
>> [1] If there’s a Welsh word for frenulum, I’m impressed.
>
>Is there an English word for frenulum?
LOL — one of the more amusing Redwood stories was him condemning Welsh for not having a word for Entrepreneur….
10 July 2002, Washington (DC) Post, “The Reliable Source” by Lloyd Grove, pg. C3:
According to Timesman Jack Malvern, liberal politician Shirley Williams—also known as the Baroness Williams of Crosby—recently recounted to an audience in Brighton that “my good friend Tony Blair” told her the following anecdote: “Blair, Bush and [French President] Jacques Chirac were discussing economics and, in particular, the decline of the French economy. ‘The problem with the French,’ Bush confided to Blair, ‘is that they don’t have a word for entrepreneur.’”
Yesterday Malvern told us that the damaging story—which reminded us of former vice president Dan Quayle’s more unfortunate malapropisms—came to him from “a source” who listened to the baroness’s remarks. Malvern added that he made no attempt to verify the quote with Williams. Yesterday we made the effort, but the baroness didn’t return our call to her office in the House of Lords.
However, we did receive a call from Alastair Campbell, Blair’s director of communications and strategy, who did his best to quash the story. “I can tell you that the prime minister never heard George Bush say that, and he certainly never told Shirley Williams that President Bush did say it,” Campbell told us. “If she put this in a speech, it must have been a joke.”
Twitter
E Brown
@vajra
“If only the French had a word for entrepreneur.”
9:00 PM — 23 Jan 2007
Twitter
Stever Robbins
@GetItDoneGuy
@GrammarGirl did you know the French don’t even have a word for entrepreneur ? 
3:49 PM — 25 Jun 2007
Snopes
Claim: President George W. Bush proclaimed, “The problem with the French is that they don’t have a word for entrepreneur.”
Status: False.
(…)
Barbara “ears of corn” Mikkelson
Last updated: 23 September 2007
Twitter
James Pearce
@jamespearce
@PaulWalsh : “The problem with the French, is that they don’t have a word for entrepreneur.” http://rurl.org/9np
1:26 PM — 26 Sep 2007
Twitter
Justin Guy Souter
@justingsouter
LOL “The thing that’s wrong with the French is that they don’t have a word for entrepreneur” — Dubya, as quoted by http://twurl.nl/lxoe1w
10:19 AM — 8 May 2008
Forbes.com
FEB 14, 2014 @ 11:10 AM
Entrepreneur: The French Do Have A Word For It
Alison Coleman , CONTRIBUTOR
There’s no firm evidence that he actually ever said it, but President George W. Bush’s reputed utterance to British Prime Minister Tony Blair that “the trouble with the French is that they don’t have a word for entrepreneur” probably echoed a widely held notion that France wasn’t a country one immediately associated with entrepreneurs.
Wrong. The country is full of them.
Posted by Barry Popik
New York City •
Work/Businesses •
Friday, April 15, 2016
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