Perhaps there’s something in the water at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. After eight years of watching George Bush mangle the English language, Americans elected the oratorically gifted Barack Obama in November with hopes that the days of the President making up words were over.
That hope came crashing to Earth on Thursday when Mr Obama introduced the world to its newest catchphrase. At a healthcare forum with Democratic party activists in Washington he compared his recent negative press coverage with similarly dire predictions made during his run for President. He said: “There’s something about August going into September where everybody in Washington gets all wee weed up. I don’t know what it is. But that’s what happens.”
The press was puzzled. “I don’t know what that means,” wrote Mike Memoli, of the Real Clear Politics website. “Is this some Chicago phrase I don’t know about?,” asked the conservative blogger Michelle Malkin. Was it a euphemism? If so, for what? Did you hyphenate wee-weed?
Whatever the phrase’s origins, Mr Obama’s comment has invited a flurry of sniggering toilet humour. Moments after the remark Time Magazine’s Michael Scherer tweeted: “Obama just said ‘wee wee’.” The Weekly Standard’s Mary Catherine Ham added her interpretation: “My little brothers often wee-weed up the pool in August.”
Others took a more sinister view. Sam Youngman, of The Hill newspaper, wondered when the conservatives questioning the validity of Mr Obama’s birth certificate would “start saying that ‘wee-weed up’ is an old Kenyan Muslim saying?”.
Finally the White House spokesman Robert Gibbs shed some light on the subject during a press briefing. Wee weed up, he said, is “when people just get all nervous for no particular reason”. He added: “Bed wetting would be the more consumer-friendly version.”
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