Barbara Bush, wife of former President George H.W. Bush, dies at age 92.
Barbara Bush was the kind of woman who could stab you in the back while exhibiting the best of manners and grace. She famously didn’t want to waste her beautiful mind thinking about dead Iraqis when her son started his most excellent adventure in Iraq, and had the patrician’s sneer about those who were less than her, famously stating about the Katrina evacuees crammed into the Astrodome, “underprivileged anyway, so this is working very well for them.”.
She had the patrician’s gift of ignoring the suffering of others. Unless it happened to someone of her social class, such as when her child Robin died of leukemia, setting off a lifelong quest to cure cancer. Or her child Neil was diagnosed with dyslexia, resulting in her donating large sums of money and advertising to literacy programs. Other than that, she had the typical American habit of being able to ignore the pain and suffering of anybody who was not of her patrician class, whether it was soldiers being sent into Iraq, the Iraqis themselves, or the Katrina survivors in the Astrodome. That pain and suffering was apparently what was due them because of not being born to wealthy parents like she herself. Like most well born patricians of her era she could be gracious and generous towards individual little people who came to her attention. But actually thinking about the plight of the “little people” in general… why would she bother her beautiful mind about things like that, anyhow?
The best I can say about Barbara Bush is that, unlike her son George W., she never made decisions that resulted in hundreds of thousands of people dying.
The worst thing is that, like most Americans, she simply didn’t care. Why bother her beautiful mind worrying about the deaths of people who were, well, not like her?
And so another patrician is dead. A more polite and well mannered patrician than the recent crop of arrogant assholes who will stab you in your stomach while sneering at you, but still, whether stabbed in the front or stabbed in the back, you’re still dead in the end. Her kind of evil may have been hidden underneath a glove of the finest velvet, but the result, in the end, was the same: a disregard for the plight of the “little people” that led to the sort of pain and suffering that we saw in the Astrodome in 2005, and which Barbara Bush, like most Americans, waved off as irrelevant while making sure her beautiful mind was never bothered with any unsettling thoughts about the plight of those gathered there.
– Badtux the Obituary Penguin
My dad had a friend that owned a small restaurant in New Hampshire many years ago and he had as customers Barbara and a couple of her teenage sons. She tried to order beer for the boys, but my dad’s friend refused, because he could tell they were underage.
And the story turned into one of those screeching shitfits laced with, “Do you know who I am?” and such other wonderful rich people gambits.
He stood his ground amid threats of whatever she could come up with at the time.
Good on him.
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Yes! Be nice to the dead who don’t deserve it? No. Big Whore Media will create I would guess a very positive picture of this person when the real story is what you wrote and the negative effect of her words.
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While I was eating dinner in the ward’s break room tonight, the government-run 24-hour news channel had a respectful segment about B.B.’s passing and life. At least it didn’t mention the book about First Dog Millie that was so hyped when Bush I was president. There were a couple of other nurses eating there too, but I held my tongue instead of heaping invectives about what a patrician bitch she really was. I come off as enough of a crank about Amerikan affairs, so no point having a spray over a dead First Lady.
To me, what sums Babs up best is the anecdote that Al Franken told in one of his books written while he was still on Air America Radio. He and Lady Bush were on the same airline flight during Bush II’s warcrime on Iraq. Al came over to the old battleaxe and asked a few snarky but not outright disrespectful questions. BarBush dismissed him by saying “I’m done with you” in a tone that one would use with a manservant at the mansion. Franken said that at first, he thought Bush was joking, but then he realised that was how she dealt with commoners. (This was after his “Saturday Night Live” time, and he had introduced himself, so it’s not like he was an unknown gadfly.) What a See You Next Tuesday the woman was. No noblesse oblige there.
As far as the Neil Bush thing, she turned the reading campaign into a grift. I can’t be bothered to Oogle for the specifics, but Neil got into the standardised school testing racket while Bush II was president. Momma Bush shifted a large amount of money to his organisation, supposedly for charitable purposes. However, what it amounted to was a gift to her kid, which she could claim as a tax deduction. And the whole deal helped undermine public schools with the ridiculous “teach to the test” dynamic. Stick-up-the-arse minor royals like her were gleefully guillotined during the French Revolution.
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And let me not neglect to point out that Barbara Bush might have literally been the Daughter of the Devil.* That is. if you believe that 1920s Satanist Aleister Crowley WAS the Devil, instead of merely a kinky goofball, and that Bush’s mother got knocked up by the bugger during one of his orgies.
*Linky provided for amusement purposes only, because that site is almost flaky as Rense or Godlike Productions
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This is the single best description of the Bush family that I have ever read. May her despicable husband and idot son join her soon.
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Back when Bush the Elder was in the White House, I knew someone who worked with the National Park Service’s Historic American Buildings Survey on a project documenting the physical structure of the White House. This person described Babs as being pretty much a total bitch who treated everyone like dirt unless there was a worthwhile (e.g., media) audience to witness her being nice to the little people. Bush the Elder, on the other hand, came across as a basically nice guy. . . or at least not openly contemptuous of anyone who didn’t come from money. Because she looked like a grandmother, people seemed to think she was as warm and fuzzy as one’s own Nana. Nope. She was a cold-hearted bitch who didn’t give a shit for anyone outside her immediate family.
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I’ll be respectfully sad when Bush I dies. Which is likely to be soon. I wasn’t in favour of him as a politician/policy maker, but he did an OK job being the real president when Reagan was too senile. I don’t think they should have named an aircraft carrier after 41 while he was still alive. After all, his shining moment came when his plane was shot down. Like McCain! Only Bush I didn’t crash five planes like…
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The only good thing I can come up with to say about her is that she criticized Trump for his lack of manners. I did notice a lack of criticism about his policies, but I kind of expected that.
Not a fan of the whole Bush clan, really, from Prescott to Prescott.
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Buk
McCain only lost 3 Jet’s, 2 to compresser stalls and one to nva, plus one damaged.
Barb Bush hagiography is just routine American celebrity worship. She looked like she had a thyroid disorder to me. She sounds as nice as Merle Haggard was.
Poppy, who served in WWII combat, will deserve at least to remembered for that.
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Perhaps the most notable thing about Bush I, at least to me, is that he was the only legitimately elected Republican president in my lifetime.
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