Does the President Fart?

As I was watching President Obama’s State of the Union Address last night – that annual exercise in insignificance – I began to wonder if the president ever farts, if any president has ever farted while giving a speech, and if so, has it been picked up on microphone, and if so, what was the response of the audience and the analyses of the analysts who analyze presidential speeches. Presidents’ speeches have been broadcast and recorded for almost 100 years now (Calvin Coolidge gave the first State of the Union Address over radio), almost on a daily basis for the past 50 years or so. You’d think the odds would favor that at least once in all of the thousands of hours of speeches that some president (my money would be on Gerald Ford) would have let one rip, and that it would have been caught on tape. What was the response of the audience? Did they wince in embarrassment? Did they giggle like a group of fourth graders? Or did Joe Wilson (R-South Carolina) shout out “You lie!”? Perhaps everyone empathetically kept their silence, including the media (though that seems highly unlikely). Maybe presidents are given gas reduction medication prior to any major speeches.

I googled “president fart” and got 3,460,000 results, the first being this on YouTube:

Unfortunately, this is a bogus clip, and I didn’t bother going through all the rest of the 3½ million hits. So the question hangs in the air, as it were. I realize this isn’t the most cogent analysis of Obama’s speech. But I doubt that you’re likely to find any more insightful appraisal in print, on cable, or online.