(And some days it takes more Stones than others...) Where Mythical Bestiary meets Contemporary Culture and Chews On Its Leg Until Covered with Slobber.
More antique Dane than Roman, I often berate myself for impulsive words that caused hurt while I was all of fourteen. When I was twenty, I so embarrassed myself in a conversation about existentialism that I went on to minor in philosophy until some of the sting went away. And the worst thing I ever said… bad enough to cut my own tongue out before I’d confess in print.
Happily, those who feel chosen to lead us through the flood have no internal editor to protect them from speaking too soon. They ignore the old saw: rather than be thought a fool, they are compelled to open their mouths and remove all doubt.
Whoever wins— and I’m sure there’s more to come! Will have to compete for Flaming Asshole of the Year against last week’s classic: "I don't think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees." (C. in C. Bush on "Good Morning America," Sept. 1, 2005.) Good luck to you all!
The nominees for Flaming Asshole of the Week are:
Dennis Hastert on rebuilding New Orleans:
"It looks like a lot of that place could be bulldozed," the Illinois Republican said to the Daily Herald of Arlington Heights, Illinois. "We ought to take a second look at it. You know we build Los Angeles and San Francisco on top of earthquake fissures and they rebuild, too. Stubbornness. I don't know. That doesn't make sense to me." … And Los Angeles had better not come crying to me after the Big One hits.
Trent Lott to three child refugees, resting on cots:
“Now tell me the truth boys, isn’t this kind of fun?” …Yessuh, Huckleberry, it JEST like camping out. Hope you rebuild your beach house porch in time for Mr. President G.W. Bush to SIT his SILLY ass DOWN.
Rick Santorum, who saved us from dog-fucking by holding the line on gay marriage, now sees a need to punish those who didn’t get out in time:
“There may be a need to look at tougher penalties on those who decide to ride it out and understand that there are consequences to not leaving.”
Barbara Bush the Elder, visiting refugees in the Houston Astrodome:
"What I'm hearing which is sort of scary is that they all want to stay in Texas. Everybody is so overwhelmed by the hospitality. And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway so this (chuckle) – this is working very well for them." Sept. 5, 2005, first aired on American Public Media's "Marketplace"
But the president himself may take the palm for the second week in a row, after this endorsement of FEMA director Michael Brown on September 2:
"Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job."
3 comments:
can i vote for all of them?
I'm going to have to vote for Barbara on that one - god forbid we should let the underprivleged stay in Texas (though why anyone would want to stay in Texas is beyond me). She probably doesn't want them to stay because she realizes that they are probably all democrats and didn't we grant the "underprivleged" the right to vote a while back - like right after them damn Yankees won the civil war?
You can’t blame the south for this one-- and by the way, Lewis Coleman of New Orleans informs me that the Civil War is referred to in the South as "The Recent Unpleasantness."
The Bushes are Ohio money originally. Shrub's great-grandfather made iron couplings for the Harriman's railroad cars and his grandfather Prescott moved from there to New York to run Harriman's investment bank. (A Bush helped found Ohio State's football program, more than enough to damn them in the eyes of a true son of Michigan.) Prescott's firm did launder Nazi money until 1942, when the feds caught up with them, long after the Nazi invasion of Poland in 1939. (Only a low gossip would remember that Harriman's mother was the financial angel of the American eugenics movement.)
Let us put a sunny face on this; Prescott probably wasn't a Nazi. It does seem that the Bush family has never been too choosy about the company it keeps, so long as everyone's making money. We see this in the current family chumminess with Saudi Arabia, that bastion of women's rights.
Barbara's father Marvin Pierce was a publisher at Redbook and McCall's magazine. She met Shrub's father at 16 and was married by 17 or 18, so we have to assume that she adopted some of the Bush family attitudes. "Why should we hear about body bags and deaths," she said about the war in Iraq. "Oh, I mean, it's not relevant. So why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that?"
Mental shrug on my part. Her attitude is probably typical of her insulated class. Her son has spent his whole life being mentally insulated from the consequence of his actions.
When has he ever had a calamity that he hasn't been rescued from, by friends or family? That's why Shrub is perplexed by other people's frustration and anger. Why don't they just make a few phone calls, glad-hand some connections? That's what he would do if his house blew down.
MF
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