Andrew Ferguson waxes philosophic on “The Wit & Wisdom of Barack Obama“:

There’s still room for whimsy at the New Yorker magazine, I don’t care what you’ve heard. Just the other day two of the New Yorker’s bloggers (now there’s a phrase to send Harold Ross spinning) were chewing over the widely noted eloquence of Barack Obama. They were struck by “Obama’s wonderful line,” as one of them described it, to the effect that “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.” Obama uses it as one of his signature refrains. Some of his followers even turned it into a music video.

So one thing led to another, as it does on blogs, and before long the bloggers began wondering, as they do at the New Yorker, what the phrase would sound like in French.

“You couldn’t say it in French,” blogged one of the bloggers.

“Are you sure about the French?” the other blogger blogged back. “Mine isn’t good enough to know if ‘C’est nous qui nous avons attendu’ or ‘Ceux qui nous attendons, c’est nous’ would sound French to a French ear, or if it just would sound stupid.” Oui, blogged the first blogger. It would sound tr

Filed under: Muggeridge's Law, The Making of the President