28 Days

So, every time there's an interview in People magazine with President and First Lady Bush, I have to buy it. I have to buy it, and read it, and hate it. It's just one of those things. Something about the magical combination of People's horrendous interviewing skillz and the Bushes' propensity for talking absolute shite, in a tone as though it's meant for three-year-olds, just makes me crave these journalistic slices of brilliance.

Anyway, there's an interview in the latest issue of People, so I had to buy it, and I'm reading the "Bush 2008 Interview" (which is titled Into the Sunset; I told you this shit was superb) this morning when I come across this gobsmacking bit of behind-the-curtaineering into Bush's psyche:

Which moments from the last eight years do you revisit most often?

THE PRESIDENT: I definitely think about the families I've met of the fallen soldiers—about the compassion, love and determination of the families, to make sure that the Commander-in-Chief hears their stories and knows their pride.

I think about throwing out that pitch at the World Series on [Oct. 30] 2001. My heart was racing when I got to the mound. Didn't want to bounce it. Didn't want to let the fans down. My heart was pumping so hard, I wasn't sure if I could lift my arm. I never felt that anxious any other time during my presidency, curiously enough.

I love how he knows that just going right into the baseball thing would be callous, so he throws a bone to the families of the soldiers who died in the two wars he started and summarily turned into enormous clusterfucktastrophes, noting he hears their stories and knows their pride, even if he can't be fucking arsed to attend their funerals and fund the VA.

Thirty-five words on thousands of dead soldiers, then right onto the good stuff!—a memory so important to him he evidently got the date wrong.

A major terrorist attack, two wars, Abu Ghraib, the execution of a foreign leader, a drowned American city, multiple school shootings, natural disasters, international crises, genocides, the suspension of habeas corpus, outing one of our own spies, spying on American citizens, disregarding the Geneva Conventions in order to torture detainees, soaring unemployment, record foreclosures, increased homelessness and hunger, a harrowing economic crisis—and he "never felt that anxious any other time during [his] presidency, curiously enough."

It's like while everyone else was getting increasingly stressed, he was getting ever more relaxed: The Curious Case of President Douchebrain!



28 days...