PHILADELPHIA (AP) -- "Doonesbury" creator Garry Trudeau has apologized -- sort of -- for a Sunday strip that cited an Internet hoax that said George W. Bush had the lowest IQ of any president in the last 50 years.
The strip depicted a purported conversation between an unseen Bush and an adviser in the White House. It cited a purported ranking of presidential IQs based on public statements and writings.
In the "study," Bush was said to have an IQ half that of Bill Clinton and a little more than half the average presidential vocabulary.
The "Doonesbury" Web site acknowledged that the ranking was an Internet hoax and said that citing it was "a regrettable error, although perhaps inevitable, given that this feature uses the same fact-checking house as 'Saturday Night Live' and The Drudge Report."
"Trudeau takes full responsibility, acknowledging the use of fictional material from an outside source instead of simply making it up as he usually does," the site says. "The creator deeply apologizes for unsettling anyone who was under the impression that the president is, in fact, quite intelligent."
Universal Press Syndicate senior editor Alan McDermott said Trudeau told editors in an e-mail that a "usually reliable" source had pointed out the purported study to him.
The fake study quotes the Lovenstein Institute of Scranton, Pa., and cites several so-called world-renowned authorities using something the Swanson/Crain system of intelligence ranking. No such institute is listed in the Scranton phone book, and researchers have said they have never heard of either the research system or the authorities cited.
