Italian Prime Minister and Chief Partier Silvio Berlusconi is overheard on some tapes referring to me disparaging "the entire cast of Jersey Shore" and wondering aloud "how people so stupid could walk and breath at the same time." That is completely wrong. I never said that about the cast of Jersey Shore. I said it about Silvio Berlusconi.
I like to use the British word "swingeing," as in "swingeing cuts to public transportation." However, I do not like "swinging"; that would be something completely different.
Okay, I was caught on tape while staying at the Russian ambassador's residence in Kabul telling him that "I don't know who Jennifer Carpenter is or why Michael C. Hall married her, much less why he's divorcing her." I consider sharing that information with our Russian friends to have been an international courtesy intended to further our shared global agenda and not at all reflective of my increasing confusion when staring at supermarket tabloids in the checkout lane.
I was nowhere nearly as deeply involved in the Iran-Contra scandal as the tapes and videos and satellite tracking and extensive witness corroboration would suggest. I merely mused aloud in a National Security Council meeting that the Iranian mullahs should "just eat cake." I was making a little Marie Antoinette joke, okay? Only much later did I suggest sending them an actual cake with a Bible and some weaponry. You can read that so many ways, and my enemies are trying to twist it to their own devious ends. I suggest you look into their motives for doing so.
Oh, boy. This is the big one. To be clear: I told NBC to "give Leno his show back," I never intended to slight the fine work of Conan O'Brien, which I have never seen. I simply meant that Leno's work was better than Conan's work, which I have never seen. I watch Jon Stewart.
And, finally, I did indeed send the president of Micronesia my complete collection of One Day at a Time on blu-ray. But it was not a gift intended to sway his actions; it was a loan. And the jerk still hasn't returned it.