5 posts tagged “george w. bush”
It's ten minutes, but it's a good ten minutes.
One has to wonder why this has gotten very little coverage while John Kerry's "botched joke" dominated several news cycles in November. I'm not advocating that we dwell on this stuff, but some consistency would be nice. And as far as I know, John Kerry didn't make anybody cry.
July 11, 2007
The Washington Times
Bush jokes. Crowd laughs. Girl cries.
A question for President Bush on immigration rose up like a ghost from the grave this afternoon in Ohio.
Only the questioner was a 13-year old blonde-headed girl, Jessica Hackerd, from Brecksville, Ohio, who immediately broke into tears after making her inquiry.
"Mr. President, I know immigration has been a big problem in the U.S. And what is your next step with the immigration bill?" Jessica asked Mr. Bush, during a question and answer period after a speech Mr. Bush gave to a Cleveland business group.
Mr. Bush's sarcastic reply -- a wry "yeah, thanks" -- drew laughter from the crowd of 400. But the attention caused young Jessica, who characterized herself in an interview afterward as very shy, to immediately tear up.
"No, it's a great question. No, I appreciate that," Mr. Bush said, as he saw Jessica's reaction.
Jessica, in the interview, said that she was crying because she was so nervous.
But when the president's sarcastic answer was mentioned, she said, "I heard that too."
Mr. Bush went on to speak more than 1,100 words about the death of his proposed comprehensive immigration reform, which was a heavy blow when it fell apart last month.
But Jessica, there with her parents and younger sister, continued to wipe tears from her eyes for several minutes, and midway through his answer, Mr. Bush again tried to encourage the distraught youngster without drawing too much attention to her.
"It's a great question by the way, and I'm glad you asked it," Mr. Bush said.
But when the president finished taking questions, an aide immediately went to Jessica and took her backstage.
After Mr. Bush had finished shaking hands for over 10 minutes, he met with Jessica and her family.
"He said it was really brave of me to do that and he said he probably wouldn't have been able to do that," Jessica said. "And he said it was the first time anybody had asked him about [immigration] since it happened."
Jessica said she did not say much besides, "Thanks."
She asked the question about immigration, she said, because her father, Richard, has engaged her in conversations about the topic, and that was what popped into her head.
-- Jon Ward, White House correspondent, The Washington Times
From "Uncle Sam & The Freedom Fighters" #2 (October '06), by Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray.
Click and enjoy.
What fucking century are we living in?
I'll try to keep this short, if only because I have no illusions about the extent of my readership. Of all the abominable (like the snowman) things that this administration has foisted upon the people of this country, including an impossible war on terror (unwinnable war, wasn't that in 1984, which everyone read in tenth grade?), a cavalier disregard for the underprivileged (especially when they're under water), and economic policies that favor the rich, this has consistently been the issue that gets under my skin the most. The Republican Party's touting of the defense of marriage is their most cowardly and sickeningly transparent issue, and the fact that the country grapples with this at all makes me ill.
You can read the text of George W. Bush's June 3rd radio address here. I couldn't get through the whole thing, as it makes me (say it with me now) ill. Let's begin with this; all of this is based on the logical fallacy that letting dudes who like to kiss other dudes marry the dudes they like to kiss will undermine heterosexual marriage. This is not true. Straight marriage does a fine job of undermining itself.
Why not outlaw the most direct attack on the sanctity of marriage: divorce? If we follow Bush's logic to its conclusion, that's where we arrive. But Ronald Reagan was divorced. Newt Gingrich is divorced. Rush Limbaugh and his wife Marta have six marriages between them. Why are we going after gay people who want to be monogamous and not Britney Spears, who was married for exactly fifty-five hours in 2003? That, I'd say, does a lot more damage to the sanctity of marriage than hot woman-on-woman monogamy.
So why does marriage need protection from people who want to lend the perpetually faltering institution the credibility it could use? Is it because gay people are scary? If you're scared of gay people, let them get married. File them away into long-term monogamy, and then you don't have to worry about them coming to recruit your Shakira-loving son. It can't be because they make poor parents. That position is ridiculous, and the time that was spent debunking it was wasted, because what moron would think that?
Damn this sarcasm.
The Republicans like to couch this debate in one on activist judges. That's bullshit, plain and simple. The judiciary is supposed to operate independent of the executive. That's called checks-and-balances, and I done learned about it in first grade. They say that the will of the people mandates that marriage be protected. Because the Bush administration is so concerned with the will of the people all of a sudden. Bigoted conservatives know that if it comes down to a debate about individual gay people and their civil rights, they will lose, as they've lost before.
Pundits also like to cite human/animal unions and quote obscure Nordic marriage statistics, as if they prove anything. Not only are they reported in a misleading fashion (says Media Matters, births out of wedlock have been on the rise since 1995 in the Netherlands, six years prior to the legalization of same-sex marriage), but who cares? They are obscure Nordic marriage statistics. Do they have the power to annul the basic tenants of freedom to which we say we subscribe? The O'Reilly's and Hannity's that so eschew foreign input when it comes to American imperialism are suddenly touting European statistics? And we all know that Sweden, Norway, etc, are crazy, and have no right sharing a planet with us.
Rick Santorum is a fucking nut. I'll give him that. He's a true believer, so far-gone that he'd eat a baby fetus like that if the right ancient anthology of arbitrary folktales told him to. But George W. Bush and those like him, who are trotting out their gay whipping boys (but not actual whipping boys cause that might be gay like Vito) in an election year to fire up a base that is, get this, just as disgusted with them as the rest of the country, are cowards. They are cowards who are using prejudice against the most fabulous among us to ensure that their policies of handing dollar-sign-labeled moneybags over to the Scrooge McDucks of the world (who already have money pools!) continue.
And while we're at it, can I just say that Mary Cheney is another disgusting coward? She's doing a lot of interviews lately, promoting her damn book. It's called Now It's My Turn. Yeah. And when questioned on the reason she kept so quiet about gay rights during the 2004 presidential election, her response is invariably that she had to support her father, and that she couldn't be a "one issue voter". "There are people out there who want to kill us..." and that's why dudes shouldn't be allowed to get married.
The Democrats are wasting this opportunity. Howard Dean, in his response, defines this as a wedge issue, used to deflect attention from failed leadership. That's clearly what it is; how many politicians are talking about gay marriage now that they killed the right brown person? But Dean and his fellow Democratic partiers (byob!) are just as eager to deflect attention from the big gay elephant in the room, to never quite take a stand in favor of the gay/lesbian/and-the-rest community. There are more important issues, they say. While I agree that, to many of the American people, this is not a critical issue, it is the most important concern to the people that are having their civil rights trampled day in and day out, the people for whom citizenship in this country continues to be a series of indignities, not the ever-promised freedom for which the terrorists supposedly hate us.
If nothing else, we should be furious with Bush and his cronies for simply wasting time. Bush's Federal Marriage Amendment (the second constitutional amendment, after prohibition, that would limit civil rights, and we all know how successful prohibition was) had no chance of passing. When there are so many other vitally important things going on, Bush and Frist chose to waste the legislatures time with this dogmatist bullshit? How about rebuilding New Orleans? How about sitting at the table with Iran? How about getting in a fighter jet and taking on the aliens head-on (just like my favorite president, Bill Pullman)? Anything. Dear George W. Bush. Fucking do something. Love always, America.
What say we pitch in and buy Bill Bennet, Rick Santorum, James Dobson, and the rest of their lynch mob tickets to the Rufus Wainwright Sings Judy Garland concert? Since they believe that being gay is a choice, what better way to convert them than by sending them into the gayest lion's den since Bert Lahr was king of the forest?
I'm getting married in about a year. Its going to be totally awesome. I cannot fucking wait. But it is my sincere hope that, by that time, it will be made all the more awesome by the fact that marriage in this country will not continue to be wielded as a weapon against love, but will be an inclusive celebration of it.
