DOG EATS PRESIDENT’S HOMEWORK

Maybe, one day, these weblog templates will come with so many toys and add-ons that I will be able to reproduce a set of bombastic 172 point, New York Post style headlines, but, in the meantime, I can only imagine them. And why do I need to imagine then? Because, Saturday night/Sunday morning, I sat up until 9.00AM to watch Tim Russert interview GWB on Meet The Press. Why? Because I’ve been slagging the man off for god knows how long, and even instituted The League of Extraordinary Bushwhackers (LEB), and it seemed only fair to take a direct look at the bastard, just in case I had judged him wrong, or (I live in hope), he fucked up so badly, his presidency would be terminated right then and there, and I’d be watching TV history on a par with the Nixon/Kennedy debate.

Since the latter didn’t happen, I probably would have been better off sleeping. Prior to the Bush interview, there was little to do but watch TV, and having sat through Sunset Boulevard and identified too strongly with William Holden’s character, who can’t sell his movie script, hooks up in desperation with Gloria Swanson, and winds up floating face down in the pool, I was getting pretty depressed. Then I watched Daredevil, which was, beyond doubt, the worse superhero movie ever, plus weird Catholic undertones. (Although I did start to see why some of my friends are enamored of Jennifer Garner, only she died in the third act). All in all, I was feeling pretty grim by the time that Georgie boy came on in his neat single-breasted suit, stars and stripes pin, and blue tie.

Forget for a moment the quagmire in Iraq, the catalogue of mendacity that put us there, or the economy being to far in the septic tank that it will take Rotor-Rooter to save it. Forget the dropping approval rating that brought Bush to my screen to save himself, or the primary exit polls that show that 70% of both Dems and independents are angry and disappointed with him. I wanted to just look at the man. And within the first five minutes, I knew I wasn’t seeing a man – just a spoiled little rich boy who learned very early in life that if he goes on repeating the same lame excuse over and over, the parents, teachers, or the Highway Patrol who pulled him over drunk and coked, will eventually give up and cut him a break because his daddy’s connected. Here’s a toad-baby who has been totally raised on the shit sandwich vision of the world, where the more bread you have, the less shit you have to eat, and that, sooner or later, he will be let go if just keeps repeating, over and over, “But the dog ate my homework.”

Through the interview, Bush’s relationship with truth appears not just less than tenuous, he looks like a man who has memorized a set of flash-cards, and is desperately casting around for the one that fits the question. The rehearsed and ingratiating smile is belied by narrowed eyes that the suddenly dart right as he struggles, and the loud declamation, “I’m a Methodist”, that comes out of nowhere as he tries to explain how he’s creating religious pluralism in Iraq is little short of weird. He seems happy when, after a half hour on WMDs, and all the other lies that paved the path to war, the topic is switched to the economy, where he knows he’s on safer ground if he doesn’t quote any numbers and just keeps telling Russert that “tax cuts stimulate the economy.”

Bush stumbles over elementary words and can’t form simple sentences. And it matters, goddamn it. I don’t want to live in the same world as an obvious and over-privileged fool who has the infinite power to unleash a nuclear holocaust that could consume that world, but who can’t even pronounce nuclear correctly. I don’t want to see that cunning little grin as he tells Russert, on the matter of the his champagne draft-dodging, that, although there’s no evidence of his reporting for duty during a period that he was technically AWOL, there’s no evidence that he didn’t report. Huh? “There may be no evidence but I did report; otherwise, I wouldn't have been honorably discharged.” Huh? Then he moves on to talking about his going to Harvard Business School as though it was part of the Vietnam war effort. Huh?

I did, however, relish a tiny moment of conspiracist delight as, when Russert joked about both Bush and Kerry being Skull & Bones, and Bush laughed, “Number 322", as though someone, somewhere, understood what that meant.

After Bush I slept, but woke to more Bush on 60 Minutes, in the context of Jesus and that poisonous evangelical science fiction of The Left Behind Novels (www.theatlantic.com/issues/2000/01/001gross.htm), and the Christian toad people who believe the Rapture will come Wednesday, and rejoice that I – and the likes of me – will be left to suffer the torture of the damned.

But – oh my friends and oh my foes – this is perhaps not my most lucid writing, because today the candle feels as though it’s not only burning at both ends, but also in the middle, so I may not be totally making sense, (and some girl and logicgrl, there may be typos) but it’s from the heart and at least I figure I have one. The heartless toad people close in, and I need a drink as they look knowingly from the TV, and tell me “The Rapture will be cool.” Although another does inform me that, when they ascend into the realm celestial, they will lose the fillings from their teeth. Ha!

But, fuck, I will not be afraid. Angry maybe, maybe grim, but I will not bow to their Industry of Fear. And if they are the saved, let we, the damned, go on and party.

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Kinda short on fun today, after a long, dark and introspective night and fitful day behind closed draps. But Doc40 will post daily while the energy, audacity, and feedback holds up. So make the link a regular stop and tell all your friends. I think we have a fine forum going on here, and old Doc would like to see it spread as wide as possible. (And, oh yeah, today Doc40 got its first hit from Russia. Could it be the Russians are coming? I have a second of my books being published there.)

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CRYPTIQUE – #322?