I guess my problem with That’s My Bush! is a problem I have with humor directed at presidents overall. It’s always the Republican ones who are made fun of. Go back to Saturday Night Live and their parodies of Ford, with his statue dog, Liberty (Stay!, or Chevy Chase doing a pratfall while playing Ford). I would buy into the humor a lot more if such humor were bipartisan. Could they not make an Obama version of The Cosby Show, with Barry lugging his teleprompter everywhere, including using it at the grocery store, or even answering a cop when he gets pulled over for driving while black, with the cop acting stupidly? Heck, there was comedy gold in Clinton’s terms, with the I feel your pain/do your knees hurt, Monica?, or taking ‘jawboning’ to new heights/lows. But no, presidential humor is only aimed at stupid, dumb Republicans while a reverential tone is provided for the ‘good’ Democrat ones. Because we all know only Democrat presidents are good, as they have good intentions, and good intentions trump bad policies. Just like Obama and comprehensive health care ‘reform’.

I do not watch Saturday Night Live anymore, and haven’t for many years now. But like Letterman and all the other late night comics, they will not gore their own sacred cows, including Gore himself. Comedy is now blatantly liberal, which is why I enjoyed Colin Quinn’s Tough Crowd on Comedy Central. But that ‘make fun of everyone’ humor show was cancelled. Funny that. Heck, even Bill Mahr’s Politically Incorrect, when it was on Comedy Central, was pretty good (then he got an oversized ego and went completely off the rails).

Here’s just one clip from Quinn’s show, and I still laugh. No sacred cows spared, Hindus offended.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1-sBzxwy-s&feature=player_embedded#!

Maybe it’s available on DVD, but I haven’t checked.

Why yes, yes it is.

Most of the Amazon reviewers are Bush haters, but a few do realize that it was primarily a parody of TV sitcom conventions.

Sadly, the show was another casualty of 9/11. It vanished immediately afterwards, and I’ve never seen a rerun. Maybe it’s available on DVD, but I haven’t checked.

It was created by the South Park guys, who aren’t exactly flaming liberals. I thought it was more a spoof of TV sitcom clichés than anything. There was a Kramer-like neighbor who could come bursting through the door at any given moment (and somehow was never tackled by the Secret Service). In one episode, banquets for pro-abortion and anti-abortion groups were mistakenly scheduled at the same time in different rooms, and “Bush” had to keep running back and forth between them. It was something straight out of I Love Lucy.

And I thought the whole idea of a sitcom about a sitting President was pretty cool. Only in America!

Yes, they are hateful people – that is by definition of what you describe. No one hates what they agree with, you can find the most hate filled person on the planet and what they like they will not hate and will teach others not too.

Now, they may very well have (and given what you said probably so) not really understood that significance and not passed it on, but that type of thought doesn’t just spring up out of no where.

There were classes of people it was OK to hate just as there were classes of people it bad bad too. Most likely it was considered so obvious, so basic, so just a part of what they were that there was no *need* to teach you otherwise. However, it more or less sounds as if you took what they taught at face value.

It reminds me of a group of Atheist that were telling me that Christians were the most evil people on the planet (a group I was assigned to in a college literature class)) – they had *never* had an Atheist argue with them over their religion and Atheist were the most open minded people on the planet (unlike those evil Christians who were so badly wrong and dangerous that they needed to be gotten rid of one way or another). After a bit of hating on Christians I pointed out I was a Christian, had never had a Christian yell at me, and just had a group of Athiest do so at me. That of course an Athiest is *not* going blast another Athiest for being wrong – you have to look at how they handled people they didn’t agree with or like (and yes, I said it almost verbatim to that in a clam voice).

It resulted in yelling and shouting while I smiled at them and they went to the teacher and got me put in another group.

A great deal of the “Not Hateful People” line is because they are around people who agreed with them and never had the chance to let their Derangement Syndrome happen. It isn’t hard to make sure you the people you use to prove your “non-hatefullness” are VERY specific groups – you may not agree with exactly, but they are not agreed with in an agreed upon in a specific manner.

You can prove your universal love of all animals by being friendly with cows, horses, cat, dogs, guinea pigs, etc even though you dislike everything but the dog. It’s a different story to do Tarantulas, snakes, roaches, and other generally hated animals – yet the latter is what makes you *universally* be an animal lover instead of just picking groups to prop up your self image.

That is ultimately why the Bible (and many other religions) talk about loving your enemies – its easy to love your friends, not that hard to love strangers, tough to love your enemies. And make no mistake – people who act that way about Bush and Republicans see us as enemies.

Facts are stubborn things.

His style of writing is unadorned; he writes in simple declarative sentences. If I were to compare him to another author, I’d say he was the Anti-Shelby Foote.

I don’t enjoy how he has organized his memoir. He chose to tackle topics individually instead of writing chronologically. While it is interesting to read of his struggle with alcohol or his deepening Christian faith, I think the effects of intertwining events during his presidency is lost.

Overall, though, I am pleased to know President Bush more intimately by exploring his fascinating life before and during his years in the White House. I have always respected and admired (even though I disagreed often) him and this book only deepens my feelings about him.

I’ll give it three stars. 😉

Bush rocks, Obama sucks.

In my not so humble opinion, the basis for how a president is perceived is how he is first presented to the American people. There is only one first impression allowed. Bush was a thief and a moron. For many, 9/11 changed that perception. For the rest, 9/11 hardened a perception of the idiot cowboy. With Obama, his national stage debut was as the Keynote Speaker at the Dem Convention in 2004. He had praise and adulation thrown at him from the beginning, which is why I think he hoodwinked and bamboozled so many who now have buyer’s remorse.

The media is the message. And that message has only gotten worse and more one-sided. Sarah Palin is the latest on the Right, and certainly not the last, to be messaged by the media in an extremely negative way. The hatred by the left has to have someone external to hate in order to have a justifiable reason to hate, a scapegoat for hate if you will. Ronnie Raygun (war-mongering anti-intellectual/Bedtime For Bonzo); but Reagan was a known quantity with a long history with the American public (how else could ‘no one I know voted for him’ have won in two electoral landslides?). Bush I and the checkout scanners (stupid and out of touch). Dan Quayle and ‘potatoe’ (stupid! 11!!venty!!), without ever telling the rest of the story of how that was the way the word was spelled on the cue card given to him by a teacher. Bush II and ignorant, non-nuanced cowboy diplomacy (and liar and torturer and mass murderer). Now Sarah Palin, the Bible and gun clinging hick chick from Alaska who can’t even recite what newspapers she reads, but who knows the Boston Tea Party took place in 1773.