Tom Tomorrow: Thanks for the material, George W. Now get lost!

It's the stupidity, stupid
George W. Bush's constant gaffes and mental lapses reflect the luxurious laziness of a scion who's never had to work hard at anything. And the media elite has graciously awarded him a Gentleman's C.

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By Todd Gitlin

Oct. 24, 2000 | What does George W. Bush know and when does he know it? (A) Not much and (B) not without long study periods and (C) even then not well. This is not only funny.

Even pundits notice that the man is a gaffe artist -- that's the easy part, the (you might say) no-brainer. Evidence is not lacking that young Bush is grammatically challenged, semantically befuddled, factually slipshod. He makes a cheap spectacle of himself, whereupon his people can brand finger-pointers as, horror of horrors, elitists. Instant replay is made to order for television news -- it requires no homework -- and gaffes are made to order for instant replay.

It's not hard to go to the videotape to show Bush as Governor Malaprop, he of "subliminable," using "subscribe" for "ascribe," "retort" for "resort," "hostile" for "hostage," "forethought" for "forefront," "gracious" for "grateful," "gist" for "grist," "suckles" for "sucks," and so on ad infinitum. Jacob Weisberg in Slate has collected these and other examples (he is not the only one), as well as many an instance of Bush jamming together singular verbs and plural nouns -- as in "Our priorities is our faith" (Greensboro, N.C., Oct. 10) and "Reading is the basics for all learning" (Reston, Va., March 28) -- and inverting, as in "We want to promote families in America. Families is where our nation takes hope, where wings take dream." (La Crosse, Wis., Oct. 19) There is also his memorable crack at Gail Sheehy: "The woman who knew that I had dyslexia -- I never interviewed her." (Orange, Calif., Sept. 15)

Cast as a regular airhead, W. himself has learned to mock his own feebleness, joking, "I've been known to mangle a syllable or two, if you know what I mean." (Greensboro, Oct. 10) As he said to David Letterman the other night, "Well, a lot of folks don't think I can string a sentence together so when I was able to do so, the expectations were so low that all I had to do was say, 'Hi, I'm George W. Bush.'" That's what a man of the people does, turns a charge of incapacity into a gag at the expense of the accuser. Thus did Ronald Reagan, whose age had become an issue in the 1984 campaign, say about Walter Mondale, "I am not going to exploit for political purposes my opponent's youth and inexperience." This is the good-ol'-boy ingratiator at work, and W. has gotten rather competent at that if nothing else.

more: http://archive.salon.com/politics/feature/2000/10/24/bush/index.html

Read the sentences that came tumbling out of his mouth back in those days and you understand why Sarah Palin doesn't have to string together a decent sentence either in order to be adored by the same people. (Exactly WHY she can't is less clear--it's not as if she grew up a pampered scion like he did. I guess the only excuse she has is general intellectual laziness, period, coupled with the notion somewhere in the back of her head that if worse came to worst, there would always be a man around to take care of her--and everything she's achieved on her own has just been gravy.) He didn't need to be coherent and neither does she, because coherence is not what their admirers are looking for. What they're looking for is someone who doesn't intimidate them intellectually and seems like "one of us."

This is what you get when you pick your president based on his ability to fake folksy down-to-earthness. Especially when he's really not folksy and down-to-earth but a rich bastard who never had to lift a finger to work in his life and thus would happily screw you out of everything you've worked for because he thinks only people like himself are entitled to have what he has. Especially when he doesn't think he has to know anything to run the country because it was handed down to him as a legacy from his daddy--just like everything else.

Bewsh 41 was a fascist, but at least he was a smart fascist. To put his idiot son who had failed at just about every damned thing he did (and experienced absolutely no setbacks as a result of these failures, only came out richer each time) spoke vast volumes of how painfully irresponsible and woefully short sighted this country is when it comes to electing officials to high office.

I'm disgusted and ashamed of this country for making the choice that they did. Yes, it was blatantly stolen. Both times. But guess what . . . enough of America made it close for them TO steal, and that in itself is unforgivable. And sorry to say, America . . . but you should have known better. A Bewsh is only out for a Bewsh and their friends. Supply side economics does not help you. War without end does not help you. EVER. Do some damned research for a change; you seem to have no problem with it when it comes to vapid pop culture or sports, why not delve into how the country is run and who's pulling your strings?

Hopefully, Dumberica will look at the morass this country turned into under 20 non-consecutive years of ultra right wing rule and be a little bit more mature, responsible and wiser for the ware when it comes to choosing presidents.