The Pet Goat
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"The Pet Goat" (erroneously known as "My Pet Goat") is a children's story contained in the book Reading Mastery II: Storybook 1, by Siegfried Engelmann and Elaine C. Bruner (ISBN 0-02-686355-3). The book is part of the thirty-one volume Reading Mastery series published by the SRA Macmillan early-childhood education division of McGraw-Hill. It uses the direct instruction teaching style.
The story gained notoriety because U.S. President George W. Bush was reading it with Sarasota, Florida schoolchildren in Emma E. Booker Elementary School at the time at which then-White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card informed him of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
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[edit] Plot
"The Pet Goat" is the story of a girl's pet goat which eats everything in its path. The girl's parents want to get rid of the goat, but she defends it. In the end, the goat becomes a hero when it butts a car robber into submission. A sample passage:
- A girl got a pet goat. She liked to go running with her pet goat. She played with her goat in her house. She played with her goat in her yard. But the goat did some things that made the girl's dad mad. The goat ate things. He ate cans and he ate canes. He ate pans and he ate panes. He even ate capes and caps.
[edit] Bush's 2001 reading of the book
Bush's critics, notably Michael Moore in his film Fahrenheit 9/11, have argued that the fact that Bush continued to read the book after being notified of the attacks shows that he was indecisive. His supporters, on the other hand, contend that he was able to project calm in a crisis, and not disturb the schoolchildren by interrupting his visit. Actor Charlie Sheen, who believes that the Bush administration orchestrated the attacks has said "It seems to me that upon the revelation of that news that the secret service would grab the President as if he was on fire and remove him from that room." At 9:07 a.m. Andrew Card whispers in Bush's ear that 'America is under attack' and immediately leaves without waiting for any kind of response from the President. Critics have asked if this is all the information Bush needed to fully comprehend the situation. After spending about 20 minutes with the children, Bush was scheduled to give a short press conference at about 9:30. At the press conference inside the same school Bush makes his first speech about the attacks and is never evacuated by the Secret Service. Many Bush supporters point out that according to The Washington Times correspondent Bill Sammon, Bush's Press Secretary Ari Fleischer was in the back of the classroom holding a pad on which he had written "DON'T SAY ANYTHING YET."[1]
On the evening of 9/11 Bush stated: [2]
"Immediately following the first attack, I implemented our government's emergency response plans. Our military is powerful, and it's prepared. Our emergency teams are working in New York City and Washington, D.C. to help with local rescue efforts."
In Orlando Florida on December 4, 2001, Bush explained: [3]
"Actually I was in a classroom talking about a reading program that works. And I was sitting outside the classroom waiting to go in, and I saw an airplane hit the tower -- the TV was obviously on, and I use to fly myself, and I said, "There's one terrible pilot." And I said, "It must have been a horrible accident." But I was whisked off there - I didn't have much time to think about it."
Again at a town meeting in Ontario in January 2002: [4]
"first of all, when we walked into the classroom, I had seen this plane fly into the first building. There was a TV set on. And you know, I thought it was pilot error and I was amazed that anybody could make such a terrible mistake. And something was wrong with the plane"
Shortly after Moore's movie opened in theaters, Amazon.com sold out of all copies of the book, with a one-month backorder, and users posted satirical reviews of the book, for example: "Presidential material, through and through! [...] The tempo, the choice of words, and the layout on each page captured my imagination so much that it took me about seven minutes to recover my bearings." Amazon has since deleted these reviews though new ones continue to appear.[5]
Osama bin Laden made reference to the story in a videotaped speech released just prior to the 2004 U.S. presidential election (see 2004 Osama bin Laden video)[6]:
"We had agreed with the (Sept. 11) overall commander Mohamed Atta, may God rest his soul, to carry out all operations in 20 minutes -- before Bush and his administration could take notice. It never occurred to us that the commander in chief of the American forces would leave 50,000 citizens in the two towers to face those horrors alone at a time when they most needed him because he thought listening to a child discussing her goat and its ramming was more important than the planes and their ramming of the skyscrapers. This gave us three times the time needed to carry out the operations, thanks be to God."
[edit] Popular culture
- The incident was parodied on MADtv, where inside Bush's mind he is thinking that the pet goat is attacking America.
- When Andrew Card resigned from the White House staff, Jon Stewart mocked the fact that he had informed the president of the 9/11 attacks. He claimed (satirically) that The Daily Show had audio as well as video wherein Card rushes over to the president and says, "We're under attack, but keep reading, I must know what happens to the goat!"
- In the 2006 parody film Scary Movie 4, the President, played by Leslie Nielsen, is notified by one of his secretaries that aliens have attacked America, in a similar classroom setting where President Bush was reading The Pet Goat to the children. Nielsen's character, reading The Little Duck, an obvious parody, to the children, says to his secretary "Hang on a second, I just want to see what happens to the duck", mocking Bush's alleged indecisiveness at the time of the notification of the September 11 terrorist attacks.
[edit] References
- Engelmann, Siegfried, Elaine C. Bruner (1995). Reading Mastery II: Storybook 1, Rainbow ed., Worthington, Ohio: SRA Macmillan/McGraw-Hill. ISBN 0-574-10128-4.
[edit] Notes
- ^ Sammon, Bill. "Suddenly, a time to lead", The Washington Times, October 7, 2002. Retrieved on March 20, 2006.
- ^ White House (September 11, 2001). Statement by the President in His Address to the Nation. Press release.
- ^ Blitzer, Wolf. "President Bush Holds Town Hall Meeting", CNN transcript, CNN, December 4, 2001. Retrieved on March 20, 2006.
- ^ White House (January 5, 2002). President Holds Town Hall Forum on Economy in California. Press release.
- ^ Several websites have kept copies of some of the fake reviews; see for example http://www.sadlyno.com/uploads/sadlynogoats.htm
- ^ Osama bin Laden. "Full Transcript of Bin Ladin's Speech", Aljazeera.net, Al Jazeera, November 1, 2004. Retrieved on March 20, 2006.
[edit] External links
- Bush motorcade arrival, in-classroom video, speech, afterwards
- The full 5 minute video of George Bush's reaction during the reading on September 11th
- A Google Answers discussion of the issue
- Article in The Oregonian
- A video of Bush reading 'The Pet Goat' (with context)
- An Interesting Day: President Bush's Movements and Actions on 9/11
