Letters to the Editor
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Is this a current clip?
I'm confused. Did this interview just take place, or was it shortly after the Persian Gulf War? If it's current, it's pretty damning.
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Reap What You Sow, 41
You and Bar unleashed this prodigy on the world. I hope those tears are bitter, bitter wormwood.
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Civilized people don't blame parents for their children, or children for their parents
Or did we not learning anything from the McCarthy tragedies?
George H.W. Bush is not responsible for the current monstrosity.
We don't believe in collective guilt.
OTOH, I'm just parroting what used to be common sense. Perhaps the current situation has corrupted the left as throughly as the right. I hope not, but I hope for a lot of things that don't happen.
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If I was Bush 41
I'd always be crying. His son, the Presnit Select is a walking, mumbling, breathing sh*t stain. He is turning the Bush name into a the ultimate pejorative.
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Thanks
Joan, thanks for staying after the waterboarding issue. It's important.
I'd hate to be Bush Sr. these days.
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distance between 41 and 43
The distance between 41 and 43 is huge.
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Sad
What must he think of his and his son's legacy now? When he was VP he went to all those funerals and never teared up much. Now he does this fairly often. Wouldn't you love to be a fly on the wall when this family gets together for Thanksgiving? I wonder if Junior ever scares his father as much he does us.
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@Jackie R
I agree with Jackie R. -- if this is a current interview there's a rich vein of meaning, similar to when he cried while talking about how valiantly son Jeb handled losing the 1994 FL Gov race.
I may be reading too much into it, but in both cases he seems to me to be crying tears of regret over W as much as / more than tears of pride over the subject he's discussing. It's as if he feels so guilty, and he's imploring, "but look at all the good things I've done."
Joan, could you please clarify -- is this new video?
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Recent
The interview aired last Sunday on FOX. As far as I can tell it a current interview.
On this morning’s Fox News Sunday, Chris Wallace interviewed former President George H.W. Bush at his Presidential Library in Texas. Bush defends his son’s disastrous presidency, but later in the interview as he and Wallace stood in a mock up of a tent used by U.S. soldiers during the first Gulf War, he vehemently defended his decision not to march on to Baghdad in 1991.
That's what they wrote on Crooks and Liars.
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@ Rich_Gibson
It is true enough that generally, parents are not responsible for the crimes of their children, and vice-versa.
But surely one needs to consider that the Bush family is an elite American dynasty, wealthy and politically powerful. These oligarchic clans are organized much more like micro-tribes than ordinary families, even prosperous ones.
The "paterfamilias" in these clans most certainly do expressly inculcate their offspring, especially their male offspring, with specific "family values" which inform the offspring's character and conduct. I don't mean to suggest that this requires direct, hands-on "nurturing" from the parents; it's all mediated by the elite institutions in which the scion is born and raised.
The possibilities for a spontaneous, fundamental, intimate, engaged parent/child relationship vary from family to family, I expect; but the children of elites are born pedigreed show dogs, and are accordingly reared and trained.
So, while I don't see much point in persecuting Bush Sr. about it, I do think that he can fairly be accused of having raised a monster, a Frankenstein, as surely as a pit bull owner can be accused of training (or not-training) the dog to encourage its vicious propensities.
Respectfully, I don't think this is quite the same thing as "collective guilt", or "guilt by association".
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Giving the benefit of the doubt to people who don't deserve it is a big mistake.
GWB is an ex oil man, the son of a known nazi sympathiser. He was the head of the CIA during the fun and games that were the 70s and Kissinger's policy of manifest desitiny on a global scale. He enabled monstruosities like the Iran-Contra affair.
He has enabled his family of con men. From the billions of dollars that one of his scions cost us, the American taxpayer, with that securities scam a few years ago. To Jeb, who corrupted Florida to the point of being a banana state in this union... his moral compass is so corrupted that he no only taints his office but his family is made of a felon smuggler, a crackwhore and a stalker. But more importantly, he has enabled his first born son, who despise being a life long failure has been promoted to the highest office in the land. Because at the very end, George Bush the 1st cares diddle squat about this country, because for him this is his god damned kingdom and you and me are but mere peons.
So please, spare me the bullshit and try to humanize this piece of scum trying to shield him under the coat of fatherhood. It cheapens the institution and the link that normal human parents establish with their offspring.
There is nothing human about this gang, and those tears that you just saw are of the crocodile persuasion. May he rot in hell, although being married to Babs I am sure counts as a preview...
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Something to consider..
Men, when they get older, frequently become rather tender hearted and teary.
My father, (who used to run the Skunkworks for Lockheed in Burbank and retired a corporate vice president of the whole shebang) was as hardcore cold war Republican as they come. Icy.
Now he finds lost dogs and calls me to tell me I am beautiful and he loves me. And then cries. He is full of regret.
I have seen this happen a lot. Testosterone calms down....estrogen goes up...and its the reverse in women.
Which, I guess...explains Barbara.
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Elder Bush was shot down in the Pacific and narrowly avoided
Capture and/or death himself. No matter how cynical and exploitive you are, humility arises out of personal circumstance.
BTW I'm reading an account of the Viet Minh treatment of French Prisoners in the first Indochina war. The survival rate for prisoners who were wounded or injured was zero. I thought I was reading an account of the Nazi Death Camps. Brutal doesn't even touch on it and John McCain should thank his stars that by the time he was shot down the VN had been forced to exercise a little humanity because if he were French there was a 100% probability he would have died in captivity.