Rhymes with 'Rich'
I have Bush Fatigue. The president could ask Angela Merkel to pull his finger – and in fact, he probably has – and I’d just say, “Oh, that George!” The bombing of Iran might pull me out of my stupor a bit, but they will do what they will do, and all we can do is hunker down and wait.
But we can not fall into apathy and malaise just because, like Courtney Love, we’ve lived through this. We must remain vigilant, our blood pressure high, our faces red with shrieking and apoplexy.
When I want to get my hate on, there’s no better way than gauzy, Vaseline-lensed, slo-mo memories of the woman who spawned the president, a woman I accidentally once called a “cunt” in a poli sci class I teach at UC Irvine. (It may have been the single most appropriate sentence I’d ever spoke.) In this same class, the assigned reading included the very fine journalism of Miss Kitty Kelley’s The Family, a tour de force that followed the money back through generations of filthy Bush dealings. (Sadly, Kelley either missed or couldn’t nail down Poppy’s up-to-his-neck involvement in the Bay of Pigs and killing of Kennedy.)
In honor of Mother’s Day, and having already covered the teachings of my own mama for our communastic May Day issue, I give you but a few of the gentle murmurs and life lessons of Barbara Bush, of whom no less a personage than Richard M. Nixon said, “That is a woman who knows how to hate.”
Here is what she has taught her son.
* “Why should we hear about body bags and death? It’s not relevant. So why should I waste my beautiful mind on that?”
* “And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this, this is working very well for them.”
* “I can’t say it, but it rhymes with ‘rich.’ ” (In Grandma Bush’s defense, regarding her prim-‘n’-coy name calling of Geraldine Ferraro, history may have accidentally borne her out.)
* Going to Jerusalem’s Holocaust museum? Why not wear a flowered housedress and sandals!
* You should totally be all up in “literacy,” and then when The New Yorker’s Brendan Gill comes to your compound in Kennebunkport and wants something to read late at night, there should be exactly one book in the whole damn place: The Fart Book.
* Why show affection to your children as long as you’ve got dogs?
* But totally make sure your rich friends all give them money.
* And when you’re making contributions to a Katrina charity, be sure to earmark them for Neilsie’s latest scam.
* Any emotion can be stuffed down with a good game of tennis or a nice round of golf.
* Love your mother (of all evil).
Published: 05/07/2008
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Right again, Rebecca Schoenkopf!!