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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsThe Irony Lurking in Bush's Official Portrait (What a Moran)
Last edited Fri Jun 1, 2012, 11:59 AM - Edit history (1)
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Theres only one problem with that story: As Slates Jacob Weisberg wrote in his 2008 book The Bush Tragedy, that is not the title, message, or meaning of the painting. Weisberg explains:
The artist, W.H.D. Koerner, executed it to illustrate a Western short story entitled "The Slipper Tongue," published in The Saturday Evening Post in 1916. The story is about a smooth-talking horse thief who is caught, and then escapes a lynch mob in the Sand Hills of Nebraska. The illustration depicts the thief fleeing his captors. In the magazine, the illustration bears the caption: "Had His Start Been Fifteen Minutes Longer He Would Not Have Been Caught."
http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2012/05/31/george_w_bush_s_official_portrait_puts_the_president_with_a_charge_to_keep_the_irony_behind_bush_s_misreading_of_the_painting_.html
See post below, this story is not accurate.
rocktivity
(44,577 posts)The perfect ending to an imperfect presidency.
rocktivity
GreatCaesarsGhost
(8,585 posts)Thanks for the post.
Kablooie
(18,638 posts)The illustration in the Saturday Evening Post is different, as you can see in the link.
http://books.google.com/books?id=mJ8xAQAAMAAJ&pg=RA8-PA9&dq=SLipper+tongue&hl=en&sa=X&ei=quTIT_XSBu2d6AHnsOAJ&ved=0CEUQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=SLipper%20tongue&f=false
cthulu2016
(10,960 posts)morningfog
(18,115 posts)yellowcanine
(35,701 posts)From the style of dress of the rider and the way he is riding I don't think so.
Crossing the Alleghenies would have been late 18th - early 19th century. One crossed the Alleghenies to get to to the Ohio Valley, which was then considered "The West." The rider in the picture looks more in the style of "The West" of the later 19th century after the Civil War.
Also the circuit riding preachers likely didn't cross the Alleghenies on horseback. They more likely went the way of most of the other early nineteenth century settlers - by wagon across the Alleghenies and on flatboats down the Ohio River. The rider in the painting clearly cannot be traveling on a long journey as one would be doing crossing the Alleghenies.
It would only be once settled in the Ohio River Valley and places further west that a circuit riding preacher would have been riding his circuit on a horse. And he wouldn't have been dressed like a cowboy and riding his horse at a gallop as is depicted in the painting. A circuit riding preacher generally had about a 6 week circuit, riding nearly every day except Sundays. One didn't gallop with that kind of riding unless you wanted to kill your horse the first day.
SoCalDem
(103,856 posts)Someone there (or someone they knew ) painted this and they were gushing over it..
However,,
I thought of this famous guy when I saw the Bush portrait
cthulu2016
(10,960 posts)dixiegrrrrl
(60,010 posts)better than the one just lauded at the WH.