So George is finally catching up. Assuming he's not reading it in the orginal French.

Ah, the constant refuge of the lazy columnist - imagining a conversation/monologue/letter/book report in the words of someone else. Pathetic.

...1. that the Dipsh*it in Chief has finally finished "My Pet Goat"?

and 2. that there is now a comic-stripe version of "The Stranger"?

I meant "comic-strip"...guess I'd better start again with "My Pet Goat"...

George reads a very slim book and the press acts as if he wrote War and Peace.

Boring, sophomoric and utterly predictable. Nice work Salon.

from "A Fish Called Wanda"

Otto: "Apes don't read philosophy."

Wanda: "Yes they do Otto - they just don't understand it!"

Salon, you can do better than this.

Please tell me that all Bayard got in exchange for this was a Premium Membership...

Almost as funny as that stuff they try to pass off as humor in the New Yorker.

FYI, "Rummy" is not a particularly funny nickname (see M. Dowd).

What IS this crap, Salon? Who the hell thought publishing this drivel was a good idea?

I'm starting to rethink my subscription. I can get garbage like this elsewhere, and free to boot.

Amusing. Very McSweeney's.

He needs to go live in Midland for a few years, learn to talk right.

if GWB wants to read a short book how about Terrorism- Ours and Theirs by Ahmad Eqbal? It's about the same length as the Camus, and it's available in English.

I know another short book Shorty could do a report on to equally good effect. It's called "Acts of Aggression" by that Jew guy Chomsky, Pansy Clark and that A-rab friend of theirs. Quick read and it had a real good ending. It's not written in Jewish or A-rab, either, just Liberial American. I think Condi's already been through it, so she could help Dub pronounce some of those college words Chomsky likes to use when it's his turn.

Hey, I just noticed this, and it's probably not PC, but doesn't Camus almost rhyme with "anus"? If you change a letter or something? Haw haw haw.

This was too realistic. It's gonna gimme bad dreams.

His 'writing' isn't much more advanced than W's reading - probably less so.

but I can't believe the Jill Carroll story was relegated to Broadsheet while this vitriolic attempt at satire gets above the fold placement. It's not like there's a lack of hard news in the world. And if you really want to analyze the president's reading habits, at least report something substantive like slate did:

http://www.slate.com/id/2133669/

And nobody in Texas actually talks like that, even George W.

This made up shit is really stupid

Journalism at its finest. Worth every penny.

Many have speculated about why the president chose this book. I think it is because he saw Ali G reading it in Talladega Nights.

I remember a few summers back, all Bush's Republican lackeys were crowing the W was reading McCullough's John Adams biography. Near the end of Bush's month in Crawford, a reporter finally gathered up enough nerve to ask him about it.

Reporter: How did you like "John Adams"

Bush: It was good.

Of course, no follow-up questions were allowed.

Somehow I doubt our ADD president actually finished it.

I'm not urging giving Bush a break, especially when he's down, but if this is the best you can do for satire, maybe I'd better check and see how much you guy's pay for articles. I could reread The Stranger and make something up that was a hell of a lot better than this. And it's got to be easier than practicing law.

We get it, okay? The president is a dum-dum. It's not an original observation. The joke is tired. Salon does nothing to refute its reputation as a left-wing commie pinko rag with a stale biscuit like this one. (And I am, incidentally, a left-wing commie pinko-leaning person myself.)

can't say i'd have rather heard that he was reading 'the devil wears prada,' but i find it a teensy bit curious that the president's handlers announced to the world that he was reading a book about an alienated, remorseless man put on trial for murdering an arab . . .

The way Bush talks reveals how he thinks- incomplete, shallow, and illogical. Louis captured this perfectly. I'm still laughing.

After reading the overwhelmingly negative comments to Bayard's column, I began to wonder "What's wrong with Salon's readership"? Don't they get satire or irony anymore? Have their parody genes gone dormant?

Then it occurred to me: It's no longer possible to successfully parody the Bush Administration, for it is a parody of itself.

Can you imagine Bill Clinton, the former Rhodes Scholar, actually having to orchestrate some pathetic scheme to give people the impression that he was smart? Now, while Bill Clinton had his faults, no one could legitimately accuse him of being a dunce.

And yet despite the fact that Bush has proven over and over again that he is a dunce, despite the fact that he has actually reveled in his intellectual mediocrity (remember the commencement address at Yale?), and despite his own pronoucements about how newspaperin' and bookifyin' are for elite, effite little pansies, Tony Snow Job trots out to tell us about Camus.

They are are parody of themselves. Which is why I'm sending this article to every right winger I know. Only I'm telling them that Bayard writes for Fox News, that way they'll know it's true.

I wanted to leave the body of the letter blank to communicae that I have no idea why George B read the Stranger, but I wasn't allowed to. So, I have to write this long-winded explanation in lieu of the clever piece of no entry that I hoped would communicate the absurdity of the said act undertaken by George B, reportedly. Though, this sounds just as absurd.

I'll admit to being a little disappointed in the Camus essay, but I'm not going to let broad-brush condemnation of Louis Bayard as a writer go unchallenged. I just finished reading my second Bayard novel of the summer yesterday ("The Pale Blue Eye," hot on the heels of "Mr. Timothy" -- and I'm tracking down his previous two books, "Endangered Species" and "Fool's Errand"). He's an engrossing author, and both of these books were a terrific read. So let's lighten up on Salon and allow Mr. Bayard an off day once in a while.