Independent UK: How did this wastrel ever find his way to the White House?

[marmar]

Matthew Norman: How did this wastrel ever find his way to the White House?
It takes a certain minimal intelligence for the truly dim to have a notion of their own dimness, but this is denied George Bush. He has the self-awareness of a bison

Wednesday, 10 November 2010


May the Lord the former president so ostentatiously worships have mercy on my soul, and those in Iraq without water, electricity and medicine forgive me, but I just cannot suppress a twinge of sympathy for George W Bush.

The source of this pity pang isn't the usual one with those struggling bemusedly with the loss of power (Mrs Thatcher literally unable, for example, to dial a phone number). So far as the practicalities, Mr Bush has adapted well. Apparently he concludes his memoir Decision Points with the familiar anecdote of how, within days of leaving Washington, he was picking up his dog's mess with a plastic bag in a Texas park. Evidently he regards this as a cute vignette of the transience of power, as well as his own endearing lack of pomp. Yet what causes the stab of pity is the stupidity at which it hints.

How could anyone in possession of a three-figure IQ (still a moot point with Bush) fail to see what a golden gift that image is to satirists? There he is, in the cartoon in my head, scooping up a couple of Cumberland sausages while following him, shovelling up the Augean Stable-sized steaming pile he left behind in the Oval Office, is Barack Obama at the wheel of an industrial digger.

This blindness to visual imagery is quite a motif, judging by Times extracts and an interview with its editor. Apart from being attacked for indifference to black people by Kanye West, the rapper Obama dismissed as a jackass, all his greatest regrets are pictorial public relations disasters.

....(snip)....

For the two imbecile wars he began, for condoning torture by denying waterboarding was torture at all on the grounds that his lawyers said it was legal; for turning the surplus he inherited from Bill Clinton into the crippling deficit that is bringing the age of American hegemony to a startlingly abrupt end; and for being the pitiably Wagnerian fool who stumbled on to the grandest stage without any apparent clue why or for what earthly purpose, there he will forever remain. ...........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/matthew-norman/matthew-norman-how-did-this-wastrel-ever-find-his-way-to-the-white-house-2129608.html

[aquart]

1. Being very hard on bison, don't you think?

[marmar]

2. LOL

[malaise]

3. True

but it is a great line :rofl:

[Canuckistanian]

4. I like this guy!

I have a mental image of Obama with a backhoe, waiting for Bush to leave.

:rofl:

[Bluenorthwest]

5. Having spent some time with Bison...

I'm going to vote for the Bison in that contest.

[marmar]

7. Me too.

[provis99]

6. Bison are self-aware.

They can recognize their reflections in standing water. Bush has the self-awareness of a retarded gnat.

[radhika]

8. Wait til he sees our newly elected T-Baggers n/t

[eppur_se_muova]

9. Quite a slur on bison. nt

[xxqqqzme]

10. Precise reduction -

"...The reduction of Bush's two terms to a satirical sequel to one of those US prep school movies in which the smirking, idiot boy breaks the honour code but is rescued by his Brahmin dad had come to seem shamefully hackneyed. But the one cliché worth trotting out here is that clichés are clichés because they are true. Somehow this half-witted frat boy journeyed, via some jovially preposterous sequence of events involving failed oil deals and baseball team franchises, from japes with Alpha Sigma Phi to possession of the nuclear codes.

[lsewpershad]

11. The man is a buffoon

He is such a dunce that he was easily manipulated by the despicable warmongers

[glarius]

12. His eyes are a study in cunning stupidity.

When ever I see him answering questions (of anyone) I see a stupid man who has learned how to try and hide his ignorance with jokes and supposed good humour. But his eyes always give him away.
Shakespeare was right..."the eyes have it."

[kristopher]

13. I love British humor...

K&R

[wizstars]

14. "alpha waves of a turnip"...

my all-time favorite description of Junior's intellect.

[HughBeaumont]

15. 'Murkins love their Republican legacy brand names, I guess.

They take great pride in being ignorant. All of that thinkin', it's too much WORK!