Hope and Fail

It’s corps, not corpse — redux

While speaking at the National Prayer Breakfast, President Obama talked about God’s grace and the humanitarian efforts of the U.S. armed forces in Haiti. He included a story about a Navy corpsman — but he mispronounced corpsman, saying “corpse man,” twice and he got the corpsman’s name wrong.

One such translator was an American of Haitian descent, representative of the extraordinary work that our men and women in uniform do all around the world — Navy Corpsman Christian [sic] Brossard. And lying on a gurney aboard the USNS Comfort, a woman asked Christopher: “Where do you come from? What country? After my operation,” she said, “I will pray for that country.” And in Creole, Corpsman Brossard responded, “Etazini.” The United States of America.

This is a bit embarrassing for a president who reportedly was so worried about offending the armed forces that he practiced his salute. And we’ve got to wonder, does he say “Marine Corps” or “Marine Corpse?”

Allahpundit at Hot Air writes:

I can’t believe that a guy with a Harvard Law degree wouldn’t know how to pronounce “corps,” so I’m guessing some dumb staffer in charge of TOTUS decided to try to “help him out” by typing the phonetic pronunciation — incorrectly — into the machine. And in true Ron Burgundy fashion, O read it as is right off the ‘prompter. You stay classy, Navy corpse-men!

Even if it was wrong on the teleprompter (which isn’t outside the realm of possibility), the president could have corrected himself — and avoided making the same mistake twice. Especially since he made this same mistake back in October.

And doesn’t anyone proofread the president’s speeches before he gives them? Mixing up the corpsman’s name is just amateur.