The death of Barbara Bush at the age of 92 has dominated the airwaves today, and the hagiography has been nauseating. The coverage of her death is glossing over just how horrible Babs was. Her comment on Good Morning America two days before her son's disastrous attack on the innocent people of Iraq is about as repulsive as a statement can be:
But why should we hear about body bags and deaths, and how many, what day it's gonna happen, and how many this or that or what do you suppose? Or, I mean, it's not relevant. So, why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that, and watch him suffer?
Yeah, why concern yourself with contemplating the hell that your idiot son is going to rain on some poor brown people half a world away? Hell, those benighted barbarians don't count as people, none of them has ever been Junior League material!
Almost as repulsive as that quote was her statement on Marketplace regarding the post Katrina evacuees hunkered down in the Houston Astrodome:
What I'm hearing, which is sort of scary, is they all want to stay in Texas. Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality. And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this is working very well for them.
This statement was completely dehumanizing, characterizing people who had lost loved ones, who had lost family homes which represented their sole intergenerational wealth, who had been forced to flee from their vibrant city, their incredibly rich culture, as a bunch of lucky duckies. I suspect that Babs, in an unguarded moment, would have told anyone near enough to hear that black people don't feel pain like white people do.
I know that the cliche is to not speak ill of the dead, but this is a copout- awful people shouldn't be given a pass just because they croak. Barbara Bush wasn't the saintly matron being portrayed in the media, and being one of those liberals (cursed to remember things), I won't give her a pass. I'm just glad that she stuck around long enough to watch her favorite son get his ass whipped by a vulgar boob, and the political party that she was affiliated with degenerate from a patrician enterprise to a den of cretins and thugs. Of course, being a Bush, she wouldn't have been disturbed by the Nazis in the Republican Party.
I'm right there with you. For every fawning goodbye commentary, I've got a memory of something nasty, as well. I'll be glad when this is over. You wrote a perfect piece in regard to this death.
ReplyDeleteMeh.
ReplyDeleteShe was never elected to office.
I never met her.
Her death has zero meaning to me...
You nailed it.
ReplyDeleteMy father was a Member of Congress from Texas at the same time as Poppy Bush (does anyone remember he was once a Congressman?).
All the wives in the Texas delegation used to have a once-a-month lunch together. So my mother knew Barbara Bush well.
Although she's gone now, my mother was of the Marge Simpson school of if-you-can't say-something-nice-don't say-anything-at-all.
Nevertheless she confided in us that Barbara Bush was just about the meanest person she had ever met. Mom was literally appalled.
I've been going back and forth in my mind over this - yes, I do not have a life, thanksforasking - and I'm not sure I'm buying the term 'Dowager' even though it makes a good headline. In the end, it's NOT a good headline if it didn't get there honestly.
ReplyDelete"Dowager" refers to a widow who achieved power and wealth via her husband. Ms. Bush's father was the President of a huge publishing conglomerate in New York. She was disqualified for 'Dowager' the day she was born....
I'm of the belief that that not speaking ill of the dead rule only applies to people who are not thoroughly evil. In addition to the incidents you mentioned, there is the pretty well documented fact that Barbara's cruel raising of her children went a long way towards making GWB the inhuman slime ball he grew up to be. Then there her joking around as her cretinous husband was groping women from his wheelchair. The offhand way she chuckled about it made it pretty clear that she knew GHWB was a lifelong lech little better than our current president.
ReplyDeleteRichard Nixon once said that the real difference between Barbara and her husband was that Barbara "knew how to hate." May she roast in hell.
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