Frank Rich: Mr. Bush Won't Be at the Tonys

[kskiska]

IT'S now official. George W. Bush is not a theater queen.

The word came on May 22, after the president had taken his mountain biking fall on his ranch in Crawford. "You know this president," said Trent Duffy, a White House spokesman, taking pains to explain that his boss had been on a 17-mile marathon, not some limp-kneed girly jaunt. "He likes to go all-out. Suffice it to say he wasn't whistling show tunes."

Let's face it; there had been some nervousness about Mr. Bush's butch bonafides. The president was on record as having loved "Cats." His uncle, Jonathan Bush, a New York song-and-dance man in the 1950's, had appeared as Will Parker in a revival of "Oklahoma!" ("A first-grade hayseed!" raved a critic at The New York Times.) Then there was that lingering question about why a president who had avoided Vietnam was dressing up in Tom Cruise pilot drag and, in Wesley Clark's phrase, "prancing on the deck of an aircraft carrier" in our current war. The scene looked more like a slab of choreography from the World War II movie musical "Anchors Aweigh" than "The Longest Day."

Had Mr. Duffy not intervened, some voters might have feared that the president would be tuning in America's gayest awards show, the Tonys, on CBS tonight. In an election year whose signature culture war has been fought over same-sex marriage, Mr. Bush and his party have made a fetish of distancing themselves from all things gay.

more…
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/06/arts/06RICH.html

[grytpype]

1. This is hilarious!!!!!!

[NJCher]

2. first paragraph on second page

...about how they tiptoed around the Broadway show choices, trying to avoid one with an openly gay character had me howling!


Cher

[yardwork]

3. Thank you for posting this!

Americans merely shrugged, confirming polls both before and after that fateful day: voters rate same-sex marriage dead last in importance among issues in an election year dominated by a runaway real war.

[Jade Fox]

4. ROTL! Good job, Frank Rich....

Glad to see the mainstream media confronting the coded homophobia
of that "whistleing show tunes" remark about Bush falling off his bike.
:yourock:

[Raster]

5. perhaps if he was whistling show tunes, he might have...

...exhibited a bit of balance, grace and decorum.

Suggestion for gee-dubya to whistle: Springtime for Hitler