Independent UK: 'W has the self-awareness of a bison'

[Newsjock]

Source: The Independent (UK)

... It takes a certain minimal intelligence for the truly dim to have a notion of their own dimness, but this is denied him. Unlike Mr Tony Blair, who emerges from his well-calibrated if often chilling memoir as a man of colossal cleverness (though not intellect), W has the self-awareness of a bison. There seems even less to him than met the eye, and there was precious little of that. Astounding as it appears, we misoverestimated him.

And so the Wagner Question poses itself yet again. Every Saturday when the Brazilian sea monster murders his X-Factor song, 14 million people ask themselves how and why he is there. Reading these ghost-written titbits, you ask yourself the same. How in the name of all the saints did George W Bush, wastrel drunkard son of an East Coast patrician family, find his way to Pennsylvania Avenue by playing the genial good ol' boy from the South, and why in heaven's name did he want it anyway? And answers come there none.

... The process of historical revisionism has, like everything else, speeded alarmingly in the internet age. The emergence of Sarah Palin as an imaginable presidential candidate, allied to the unending travails of Obama, have induced in the amnesiac, the obtuse and the plain bananas a fondness for the memory of George W Bush.

It will not spread. If this great reader of history is concerned for his place in it – and that, needless to say, is why he hired a bright young groupie from Yale to write this memoir in something approximating English – he needn't fret. In those few lists ranking all the presidents compiled since he left office, W is invariably in the bottom five.

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.

Read more: 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

[Flying Dream Blues]

1. If only I could rec this 1000 times...nt

[devilgrrl]

2. What an insult to bison

eom

[Bozita]

3. Is that better or worse than a grizzly?

[BREMPRO]

4. misoverstimated lol! hard to believe but true. he hasn't changed and history will not redeem him.

he's alway been, always will be a dim petulant stubborn deluded underachiever who was anointed by the wealthy and appointed to the presidency by the right wing of the supreme court, and succeeded only in rapidly unraveling much of what was left of our economy and moral fabric, destroying the middle class to enrich billionaires, killing hundreds of thousands of mostly innocent people in the name of "democracy" and "freedom", and turning our country toward a corporate fascist state were torture was the norm, compassion was inconvenient, the environment was simply resources to be sold off and exploited and pompous corrupt corporate lobbyists ran the show. His attempt at re-writing history I hope fails miserably and perhaps the revival of his "story" will help democrats grow a pair and take on these shallow puke heads and wet tea baggers strait on who think they won a mandate and have any workable solutions besides increasing bold and counterproductive obstructionism.

[Scurrilous]

5. LOL

:thumbsup: