It should hardly be surprising to anyone that, informally and in private, President Bush speaks like anybody else, using colloquial expressions and occasionally colorful language.

A press microphone, earlier today, accidentally caught a private conversation between Bush and Blair, in which the president said, (presumably referring to Kofi Annan and the UN) “what they need to do is get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this sh*t.”

(CNN story & video –If you actually care.)

Well, not since the day our second-grade nun banged her finger, and exclaimed “Darn!,” have I seen such a display of infantile astonishment at the descent of Olympian authority to the level of ordinary humanity.

This unutterably trivial event was dotingly recorded, memorialized, and pondered over from Manhattan to Timbuktoo today, proving once again (in case there was doubt in anybody’s mind) exactly how childish and inane the collective intelligence which identifies and comments on the day’s news events actually is.