Situation Normal…

George and Laura are so normal, the normalcy is practically oozing out of their totally normal nether regions:

"We watch television just like everyone else,'' the first lady says, in an interview with Fox News Channel's Greta Van Susteren slated to be shown at 9 pm Central time tonight — after the Bushes' usual bedtime.

…With the exception of being shadowed by Greta Van Susteren [for three days], the first lady asserts that she and the president "have a very private life.''

"We have a normal life on the second floor of the White House, and most people can’t imagine that it’s normal in such beautiful surroundings,'' Laura Bush says in her interview.

"We have normal dinners. We have our friends for dinner. We have our family for dinner.

"We watch television just like everyone else,'' the first lady says. "We watch baseball games at night on TV or football games on weekends. And so there is certainly privacy there, unlike the movies show it. The Secret Service is not standing around in our rooms while we’re there.

"We do have a private and normal life.”

Uh huh. Nothing but normal here. Just like how “typical” they were back in June, at which time I said, and shall now say again, “I don’t begrudge any president of the United States having access to a White House movie theater, a personal chef, a personal tailor, and other plush trappings, because, after all, s/he is the leader of an important country and can’t be housed in a shack wearing Dockers and feasting on mac ‘n cheese. But let’s not pretend that someone who’s afforded those luxuries is the same as the rest of us. “

And let’s not pretend they’re normal, either. It’s not normal for most Americans to live in a mansion (or anywhere else) rent- or mortgage-free. It’s not normal for most Americans to have a chef cook for them, or watch their movies in a private theater. In fact, for a whole lot of Americans—and more of them each year since you normal folks moved into those “beautiful surroundings” you enjoy—it’s not even normal for them to be able to spend their evenings or weekends watching sports, because they’re working two jobs, or taking care of an aging parent who can’t afford nursing care, or helping their kids with the homework that’s become increasingly difficult since schools necessarily started “teaching to the test” since NCLB went into effect.

I understand the point Laura was fumblingly trying to make is that she and the president lead lives that aren’t totally lacking privacy, that aren’t 100% about the presidency. But “normal” isn’t the right word to use, not in the slightest, because if there were ever a duo in residence at the White House who were completely out of touch with “normal” America, it’s these cloistered cuckoos.