NYT: A First Lady Fiercely Loyal and Quietly Effective

[kskiska]

(snip)

The fact is Mrs. Bush is moving into a new role as a prominent surrogate for her husband in his re-election campaign. As the political pressures on the White House intensify, a popular first lady who creates almost no controversy has quietly raised $5 million for her husband's race, vigorously defended him against Democratic attacks — and showed herself to be more complicated and more immersed in White House policy than her public image suggests.

(snip)

As forcefully as Mrs. Bush defended the president and his policies, she also disclosed there might be distance between husband and wife on some issues. Most notably, she declined to say whether she supported a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, as conservative groups say they expect the president to do.

"I think I'll let him say if he would do that," Mrs. Bush responded. When pressed for her view, Mrs. Bush said, "I might have my own opinion, but I'm not going to tell you."

Mrs. Bush also contradicted her husband on his statement that he does not read newspapers and leaves it to his staff to provide him with what he calls unbiased news.

"He does read the papers, of course," Mrs. Bush said, adding that she and her husband make their way through five national newspapers over coffee in bed and then at the breakfast table each day. "I mean we've read the newspapers for years. It's our morning ritual, since the day we married."

more…
http://nytimes.com/2004/02/07/politics/07LAUR.html?hp

[madmax]

1. yeah, well they don't have to get up and go to work

they're both full of shit. Reminds me of the old man and Bar posing with all the grandkids in bed reading the newspaper. :puke:

[DS1]

2. Someone's got used to having a staff working for them

/maximum cynicism

[Maddy McCall]

3. American chauvinism: Quiet First Ladies are Popular First Ladies...

sad that Americans think the do-nothing Laura is a better first lady than the visionary Hillary.

[kskiska]

4. She did say this:

Mrs. Bush, her staff adds, dislikes the phrase "traditional first lady," one that is often applied to her, because its meaning in 2004 is unclear.

In the interview, Mrs. Bush said she enthusiastically supported the decision of Judith Steinberg, Howard Dean's wife, to forgo campaigning so that she could devote herself to her medical practice.

"I think it was great," Mrs. Bush said. "I mean I think she made the decision that was right for her."

Later, Mrs. Bush said she could not imagine why anyone would criticize Mrs. Dean.

"I mean it seems like people would admire that," she said.

[Maddy McCall]

7. Yeah, but she isn't supporting a participatory First Lady...

When she compliments Hillary's work, I will change my opinion of her.

[wickerwoman]

5. If I was married to either one of them, I'd spend mornings reading

newspapers too.

It beats the hell out of the alternatives.

[koopie57]

6. well of course he reads the newspapers

that is where the cartoons are!

[The Zanti Regent]

8. The Press gives Murderer Laura a pass, too!

Remember how they repeatedly lied about Hillary killing Vince Foster?

Yet, they give Laura a pass for murder!

[TiredTexan]

9. "Oh, and by the way, my husband is just a big fat liar

and I'm such a Stepford Wife that I don't understand I just pointed that out to the entire voting public. He may tell you that he doesn't read the papers, but he's lying. Really. He may tell you he wrote me a poem while I was in France. But really, he didn't write it. He just lies to make himself look better. But I'll salvage his reputation by setting the record straight when he's lying, especially if it turns out that what he originally said just confirms that he's an idiot. Trust me on this one." Your first lady, Laura Stepford Bush.

These people'd climb a tree to tell a lie when the truth was a better story.

[aquart]

15. Can you say, "Passive aggressive"?

[rooboy]

17. Definition of passive aggressive according to Laura Bush...

"I pointed the car at my ex boyfriend and accelerated" (aggressive)
"then I sat back and let my car plough into him" (passive)

Ahhh... reminds me of an old song:

No one knows what happened that day
Or how his car overturned in flames
But as they pulled him from the twisted wreck
With his dying breath, they heard him say

Tell Laura I love her
Tell Laura I need her
Tell Laura not to cry
My love for her will never die

Now in the chapel where Laura prays
For her poor Tommy, who passed away
It was just for Laura he lived and died
Alone in the chapel she can hear him cry

Tell Laura I love her
Tell Laura I need her
Tell Laura not to cry
My love for her will never die

[rocktivity]

10. PUFF PIECE ALERT!!!

:puffpiece:
Laura is "quiet" because she's told to KEEP quiet. She's NEVER said anything that wasn't pre-approved and prefabricated. And she insists on sounding like an android!


rocknation

[scarface2004]

11. popular first lady???? sez who?

either she s lying or he s lying? either he reads the paper or he doesn t??

total assholes!!

[Name removed]

12. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[rooboy]

16. Hillary Clinton accomplishes more in 15 minutes on the can...

than Laura Bush has in the last 4 years. But then again, Hillary is a senator and America's most admired woman.

[Name removed]

19. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[revcarol]

20. I got warned because I commented.

You'll probably get warned too.

[murielm99]

23. So, the cat dragged you in again, eh?

Time for an alert on this wing-nut.

[kskiska]

13. Didn't Hillary come out way ahead of her

in the poll of popular first ladies?

[murielm99]

25. Yes she did.

And she is the most admired woman in the United States. Laura is barely noticed.

[aquart]

14. How can you hate a guy with a good wife, right?

Stuff it, Laura.

[Trajan]

18. I frankly dislike cheap attacks against Bush family members ...

Like Laura and the twins ...

It was wrong when the right did (does) it .... and it is just as wrong if we do it ...

Look: ... Bush has SO MUCH baggage to carry ... he has given us SO much rope .... WHY would we want to be mean spirited against benign famiy members when a veritable Pacific Ocean of drips exists with which to lambaste the Bush presidency AND the GOP for years to come ...

Attacking Laura is a waste of time, .. and unbecoming of us ...

The idea is to NOT do what they do .... to NOT mimic their behaviour ...

[Malva Zebrina]

22. letting puff pieces go unanswered is worse

that is enabling the lies of Laura Bush.

Why should she be protected? Puff pieces like this are myth makers. She lies as much as they all do and she is out there giving speeches and raising millions by supporting her lying husband, while he is responsible for the killing and murdering of thousands of innocent people and he lied to do so.

I think you bought the puff piece. I don't think it should be allowed to stand because it paints a picture of Laura that is not real or true. She has been manufactured, packaged and sold to fit the Christain woman role. Almost everything she says about their marriage fits exactly what right wing Christain ministers define as the woman's role and she uses almost the same words.

Laura does not have an opinion on anything that she has not been to coached on. She is "not going to tell" because she has not been told what to say about it by the PR people. She is perfectly happy with that because she is intellectually lazy and lacking creativity. Possibly fearful of George also. She is as much an actress as anyone there -- the frump is not a sweet, innocent, waif needing to be defended.

She is fair game.

[Trajan]

31. In your anger about George Bush and his vicious cronies ...

You have decided that not ONE STITCH of decency remains: either in the HARMLESS women who incidently inhabit the WH, nor in your treatment of your enemies ...

Have a heart: Keep your head ... and keep YOUR dignity ...

Dont let anger distort your moral core ...

[saigon68]

26. I agree let's light up the MURDERING AWOL CHIMPANZEE

He deserves to be exposed for the deviant that he is !!!!!

[cap]

21. laura bush is a waste...

herbert hoover's wife ran relief from the White House for the unemployed during the start of the Great Depression. At least She did something for people in need.

I loved the ad I had to watch before reading this piece from the New Yorker -- the Rich are Behaving Badly, Again. Someone in the NYT sure has a sense of humor running this ad in front of Laura's piece.

However, I notice Laura is being used as a stage prop for the faithful. There are a number of articles about her in Family Home Journal, McCalls and the like. She is flying under the radar.

[Mari333]

24. Its all politics, and photo ops

They are trotting out Laura for damage control..Ive seen her on numerous interviews lately and for the last 3 years seen very little of her except as a sidekick behind George as he walks off the plane..
Its all just politics, and trying to soften the image of bU$Sh as an incompetent boob and faux cowboy warmonger chickenhawk..
Maybe Rove figures if they drag out the wife, (who is obviously more well read then bU$sh, and not as nauseating..she can hold some sentences together), people will feel sorry for her.
Who knows.
Photo ops and commercials in an election year, thats all this is.

[0007]

27. This photo at the Queen's Ball sez it all

[suegeo]

28. How long did she work?

This little quote from the article caught my eye:

..."her earlier work as a teacher and librarian have been marginalized by an East Coast elite who view those professions, according to Mrs. Bush, as traditional women's work."

Look, teachers and librarians are important. However, somebody who works 30-40 years in these jobs have it all over some spoiled little girl (Laura) who works for 3 years then tries to paint it off as a lifetime career.

Congrats, you worked for a few years, Pickles. While you are enjoying those breakfasts in bed reading the paper, there are working people out there breaking their backs trying to make ends meet.

Puff piece. Who is the NYT whore who wrote this dreck?

ON EDIT: Re-read the article. Perhaps the reporter did get in a few digs at Pickles.

Also, I guess Pickles thinks I am a member of the "chattering classes" Funny, I think of myself as a citizen, to whom these jackasses are ultimately responsible.

Also, the Bush junta sure has major hang ups listening to chatter. All that "chatter" before 9.11.01 was ignored and KABOOOM look what happened. Careful Laura, if enough of the chattering classes get pissed off enough, they tend to storm the bastille. Stuff like that.

[cubsfan6969]

29. Laura the druggie

With that big, fake smile pasted onto Laura's face at all times, it has led me to the conclusion that she's hooked on Oxycontin. She looks totally removed from reality.

Maybe she was on Oxycontin when she mowed down that pedestrian.

[GoldenOldie]

30. Actual Work Performance as Teacher/Librarian

It takes 1-year of student teaching to qualify as a teacher/librarian and at least 5-years of actual teaching time to become a qualified teacher/librarian. Laura is passed off as being the standard of a good teacher/librarian yet she has very little experience to back it up and she fails to understand what the teaching profession endures. Her biography reflects that she has never really had any cause on anything that she was truly interested in enough to take a stand on or fight for. Historically First Ladies are expected to have a cause and it has usually been something they were involved with prior to moving into the Whitehouse. Books and reading is the only thing they could come up with for Laura....don't blame her, she has had no prior experience or interest in much of anything .... just look at the books she recommends for children....they never changes.

[pippin]

32. another lazy wife of stinking rich male

She hasn't needed to really work at anything. Sitting on her cushy bum "reading" and once upon a time smoking is what she said she does.

[kskiska]

34. She only worked for a few years

and quit the day she married *. Couldn't have been very dedicated to her "profession."

[tabasco]

36. To marry an idiot like W . . . she either married for the money...

or is pretty stupid herself.

[baby_bear]

33. So we - those who question - are the "chattering class"

I think this is the most insulting thing I have ever been called, and she should not get away with it without much public scrutiny into why she considers herself a class above the rest.

What a snob!

Mrs. Bush..."characterized Karl Rove, her husband's chief political adviser, as not as powerful as "the chattering class" believes."

Boo! Hiss!

s_m

[benfranklin1776]

35. Another transparent attempt at damage control.

Everyone does their part to prop up and clean up after Junior. Now its her turn.

Junior on newspapers:

" He walks into the Oval Office in the morning, Bush said, and asks Card: "What's in the
newspapers worth worrying about? I glance at the headlines just to kind of (get) a flavor of
what's moving," Bush said. "I rarely read the stories," he said.

Instead, the president continued, he gets "briefed by people who have probably read the news
themselves." Rice, on the other hand, is getting the news "directly from the participants on
the world stage."

Bush said this had long been his practice.

"I have great respect for the media," he said. "I mean, our society is a good, solid democracy
because of a good, solid media. But I also understand that a lot of times there's opinions
mixed in with news."

To which Hume told Bush: "I won't disagree with that, sir."

Bush continued: "I appreciate people's opinions, but I'm more interested in news. And the
best way to get the news is from objective sources. And the most objective sources I have
are people on my staff who tell me what's happening in the world."

http://www.commondreams.org/views03/1015-08.htm

This seems quite clear and umambiguous. Junior made clear to his toady Brit Hume that he simply "scans the headlines" and "rarely reads the stories" as was his long standing practice since he did not like what he viewed as the supposedly opinionated aspect of news coverage. (Faux opinions such as that expressed by Hume are of course another matter) He indicated that he relied on "cheeseburger boy" Card to tell him what was in the papers "worth worrying about" i.e. whether any of his screwups was hurting him politically.

Now along comes Laura to try to clean up the mess by saying

" He does read the papers, of course," Mrs. Bush said, adding that she and her husband make their way through five national newspapers over coffee in bed and then at the breakfast table each day. "I mean we've read the newspapers for years. It's our morning ritual, since the day we married."

What the president meant, she said, was that he does not read the opinion columnists with whom he disagrees or every part of every newspaper.

"But he reads a lot of them," she said. "And I read the parts he doesn't read — except the columnists."


Nice try but no dice. Pretty transparent attempt to prop up the boy who would be king Even if we assume what she said is true then one must worry about Junior's capacity to grasp the details of daily life. Pretty sad if you can't remember reading the newspapers. Then again of course he is the one who said twice that we had to invade because Saddam wouldn't let the inspectors in. Laura should have reminded him of the ongoing inspection process in their discussions.

[Rex]

37. What a load of shit

Laura the Unloved II is a proven liar and a murderer. I'd take Nancy Reagan over her (and that's saying something).

Hey Laura, sitdown and STFU, you bore us.