Tuesday, September 06, 2005

A matriarch for our time

As was said of Barbara Bush, the wife of the first president Bush, in another, uncannily similar context: Stupid Fucking Cow!

Editor & Publisher
reports that Mrs. Bush has this to say about the scenes of despair 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--this (she chuckles slightly) is working very well for them."
The other context in which the American Marie Antoinette spoke her mind just a little too clearly? The eve of the Iraq war, where she said:
"Why should we hear about body bags and deaths...? It's not relevant. So, why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that."
To which David Rakoff responded (as quoted on radosh.net):
Mrs. Bush is not getting any younger. When she eventually ceases to walk among us we will undoubtedly see photographs of her flag-draped coffin. Whatever obituaries that run will admiringly mention those wizened, dynastic loins of hers and praise her staunch refusal to color her hair or glamorize her image. But will they remember this particular statement of hers, this "Let them eat cake" for the twenty-first century? Unlikely, since it received far too little play and definitely insufficient outrage when she said it. So let us promise herewith to never forget her callous disregard for other parents' children while her own son was sending them to make the ultimate sacrifice, while asking of the rest of us little more than to promise to go shopping. Commit the quote to memory and say it whenever her name comes up. Remind others how she lacked even the bare minimum of human integrity, the most basic requirement of decency that says that if you support a war, you should be willing, if not to join those ninteen-year-olds yourself, then at least, at the very least, to acknowledge that said war was actually going on. Stupid fucking cow.

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