2/08/2004

Breakfast with Timmy and Georgie:
The Rude Pundit just finished watching the "interview" with George Bush on Meet the Press. He will not attempt to list all the factual errors and problematic statements (like basing the war decision on "the best intel possible," which is, of course, wrong, since "possible" means more human intelligence, etc.). He will leave that to the myriad bloggers, like Atrios, Calpundit, the Progress Report, and more. Instead, let's just offer a few observations:

You know what the worst kind of rock songs are? The kind where a pampered, rich rock star sings about how rough it is to be on the road every night, performing. Christ, you wanna say, nobody fucking forced you to play a guitar, fuck groupies, and get high every night. So when Bush kept falling back on how hard it is to be the man in the Oval Office, making decisions that affect Americans, all the Rude Pundit kept thinking was, ironically, the lyrics to Bon Jovi's "Wanted Dead or Alive." Stop fucking whining. Shut the fuck up and do the job you campaigned for, destroyed others for, and finally stole.

Didn't you cringe every time Bush said the word "intelligence"?

You could so tell whenever Bush wanted to get on script: "I want to take a step back" from the question; "It's important for people to understand" that I'm not going to answer that question; "If I could" answer a question I've asked in my own head rather than the one you asked me, Tim. (Even at one point posing a question to himself from a fantasy interviewer, Bush said to the voices in his head, "That's a legitimate question.")

Every time Bush made a campaign point, he did that goddamn clenched hand with a thumb on top. Was he offering a fisting to Russert? To the American people?

In reference to his possible AWOL, Bush defended himself by saying: "There may be no evidence but" you gotta believe what I'm telling you. Isn't this the way the whole Iraq mess happened? Isn't that really what Bush was saying about the WMDs? "There may be no evidence, but . . ."

Didn't you cringe when Russert asked Bush for his opinion on the Vietnam War and, with absolutely no sense of irony, the President responded that the problem with Vietnam was that "we had politicians making military decisions"?

Did you notice that anything remotely negative was immediately dismissed as "politics"?

The Republicans are going to run the campaign of rape rooms and gay marriage.

The most frightening things Bush said? A toss-up between his campaign being based on "who can properly use American power to make the world a better place" and "I'm not gonna change."

Oh, what a deliciously useless hour. Nothing said, nothing revealed, nothing more than more of the same, more of the same. Russert did try, a few times admirably, to get Bush off-message, getting a couple of blank stares and that terrified look of trying to find words in his brain where few exist. But it would have been more interesting if Bush had simply said, "You know what, Tim? I'm gonna take a shit. You talk to me through the bathroom door while I take a Texas-sized dump. The American people put me in this office to take this giant shit in the executive washroom of the Oval Office, and I'm gonna do what they want me to do. If they don't like me shitting here, then I look forward to having a debate about my turds. Now excuse me while I go to the throne."