The Tory Party

Dubya Rant

OK, can I say something? Anybody knows I hate Mr. Bush with hot fiery hateful hate, a hate so fiery and hateful that I can adequately neither contain nor describe it, but, really, why? So he’s vacant. So he’s annoying and willfully ignorant. So he`ll make fun of a press member’s appearance if the question is too hard and he’s been awake longer than five hours, or fewer than one, or whichever. Sure, those are dangerous and terrifying traits to have in a nation’s leader, especially one of a nation that with the might of the US. But is that really something to hold against somebody personally?

To this I say, yes. Oh yes. Yes in a big way. George W. Bush is a bad person. NPR didn’t tell me this, but I learned it from listening to NPR just the same. Was it The Splendid Table that bent my will? The Connection that finally formed my political ideology? Terry Gross? Garrison Keillor? It was all of these things. To this end, NPR provides the following type of sound bite, every morning when I drive in to work (please pardon me if my details
are hazy):

After ten or fifteen minutes discussing the wildfires of current and past years with 1) a prominent, well-spoken firefighter, who effectively hammered home the point that the loss of life and health expected in sending people in to protect certain vulnerable houses is morally prohibitive; and 2) a national wildlife preserve spokesperson who discreetly railed against the sociological implications of sending in traditionally poor, disenfranchised firefighters to risk their lives for the homes of the wealthy, they play a clip from a speech Bush gave to the wealthy homeowners in question in Arizona. In it, he said:

“One home lost is one home too many.”

The very next morning, Marketplace punctuated with a Bush clip their piece on the deceit and mass complicity of the powerful that permitted both Enron and WorldCom’s scandals:

“I believe most corporations are honest.”

First, why does Bush feel the need to produce these little pat, dismissive aphorisms? Does he cling to the notion that there’s anybody left who values his tenuous opinion on subjects further-ranging than baseball and beer? Despite his frequent forays near them, does anyone think he’s been allowed into the high corporate offices with the big boys enough to know whether or not their practices are corrupt?

Surely NPR must be up to something.