Posted on 02/11/2004 2:53:25 PM PST by fight_truth_decay
CULTURAL ELITE TRASH LAURA BUSH:
How low will they go? Terry McAuliffe and John Kerry's continuing to fuel the Bush AWOL story is to be expected. The Dems will stop at nothing to take back the White House. But when the elite in the entertainment world start targeting Laura Bush, they are in for a bruising. Elite playwright Tony Kushner (Angels in America) isn't content on blaming Ronald Reagan for the AIDS epidemic, his new punching bag is the First Lady. Unlike the previous First Lady, Laura Bush has rarely involved herself in important policy matters--she is more of a traditional First Lady, which of course drives the elite nuts. Kushner's new mini-play "Only We Who Guard the Mystery Shall Be Unhappy" will be read on President's Day at the Cambridge Forum outside of Boston. In it, Laura Bush is on stage with three dead Iraqi children. "I do hate George W. Bush, absolutely, and I feel that she is a functionary of the Bush administration....I see no reason why she is less available for scrutiny," Kushner told Alex Beam from the Boston Globe.
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/living/articles/2004/02/03/trashing_the_first_lady_at_the_art/
[Note:Tony Kushner: "No performance or reading of this work may be given without express permission of the author, which will be happily granted to anyone wanting to use it at antiwar events." ]
Three children in pajamas and bathrobes sit in small chairs in a neat row. Behind them, an angel is standing. Before them, facing them, a large comfortable armchair, unoccupied. Beautiful light. The angel is, and remains throughout the play, unfailingly kind and polite.)
ANGEL: Dear Children. Please rise and give a warm welcome to our distinguished visitor, the First Lady of the United States, Mrs. Laura Welch Bush.
(The children rise, wave their arms excitedly, open their mouths to cheer. The only sound they make is the bird music from Olivier Messiaen's Saint François d'Assise.
Laura Bush enters, dressed in a purple plaid ensemble, carrying a book. She speaks with a gentle Texas drawl. She is a very nice lady. The children cheer and cheer. She stands in front of the armchair. She motions for the children to stop cheering and sit.)
ANGEL: Sit, children.
(They do.)
LAURA BUSH: Why thank you children. I don't believe I've ever had a more beautiful welcome, really really lovely. But... May I ask?
ANGEL: Please.
LAURA BUSH: Most of the kids I meet when I visit for a reading program--and I do so many of these, I love reading to kids, I meet so many kids--but most of the kids are, are wearing----
ANGEL: They aren't usually wearing pajamas?
LAURA BUSH: No, they aren't! They...well, they wear uniforms! Or if they go to a school that doesn't require uniforms, they wear, well of course you like to see them dressed neat, I do, but you know they'll wear all sorts of things. Except PJs. I just never saw that before. It's sweet.
ANGEL: Perhaps this is the first time you have read to dead children, Mrs. Bush?
LAURA BUSH: Perhaps it is! And I have to admit, children, I'm nervous. I've never met actual dead children before. Nor actual children from Iraq. Before I met my husband I traveled all over, children, all over the world, and since we moved into the White House I have also traveled, but never to Iraq. So you are the first Iraqi children I've met and you look real sweet in your PJs. And I'm sorry you're dead, but all children love books. All children can learn to love books if you read to them. That's why I've come--to read to you, to share one of my favorite books with you, because when a parent reads to a child, or any adult reads to a child, even if that child is dead, the child will learn to love books, and that is so, so important. (To one of the children:) How did you die, darling?
ANGEL: In 1999, an American plane dropped a bomb filled with several tons of concrete on the power station near his village. He was already malnourished; he had been malnourished since birth, because of the sanctions. The power station that was crushed by the bomb was believed to be supplying power to a plant suspected of producing certain agents necessary for the development of biotoxins. We do not know if it did. We do know that it supplied power for the water purification system for his village. He already had gastroenteritis and nearly chronic diarrhea, for which medicines were unavailable. Then the water purification system failed and he drank a glass of water his mother gave him infested by a large intestinal parasite. He died of dehydration, shitting water, then blood, then water again, so much! Then a trickle, everyone was sad, there was no food, he shook so hard the screws holding his bed together were loosened. It took three days to die.
LAURA BUSH: That's really awful.
ANGEL: Yes.
LAURA BUSH: Saddam Hussein is a terrible man.
ANGEL: Yes.
LAURA BUSH: (To the child:) Darling I'm sorry. I truly am. What a terrible world. May I sit?
ANGEL: Oh of course, please do!
(She sits in the armchair.)
LAURA BUSH: What can I say to you? Oh how can I say this? It isn't right that you should have had to die because your country is run by an evil man who is accumulating weapons of mass destruction. But he is, you see, he really is, everyone knows this and he will kill many, many other children all over the world if he isn't stopped. So, so it was um, necessary for you to die, sweetie, oh how awful to say that, but it was, precious. (To the angel:) May I hug him? I just would like to----
ANGEL: I'm afraid not, Mrs. Bush. The children aren't... ummm, they're incorporeal, they're like...shadows, or mirages, or dreams, it's hard to explain.
LAURA BUSH: And why are they in their pajamas?
ANGEL: Oh yes, I was about to explain. In Paradise, all dead children wear pajamas.
LAURA BUSH: Always?
ANGEL: Only pajamas, for all eternity. Bathrobes and slippers too, of course.
LAURA BUSH: Well isn't that fascinating. Why is that?
ANGEL: Like all children in pajamas they are full of regret that their day has ended. But also secretly they are comforted, like all children in pajamas. Murdered children, the children who died especially terrible deaths--this child for example! (The angel indicates a child:) She was in a shelter in 1991. A smart bomb found its way down the ventilator shaft of the shelter. The smart bomb believed, mistakenly, that it had found the ventilator shaft of a factory that manufactured parts for nuclear weapons, but the bomb was mistaken. Four hundred people were incinerated at a temperature of 900 degrees Fahrenheit. It was on CNN. Perhaps you watched?
LAURA BUSH: No, I...oh my God! I did! I saw! It was green! Phosphorus! Night footage! I remember that.
ANGEL: Melting felt to her, paradoxically, like the turning of an instant into solid ice, and then in the next instant like drowning in wild ocean surf, jumbled inside out, only fast, and then she was dead. Her family had been celebrating Eid! Children who die especially terrible deaths are given especially nice pajamas. Please continue your explanation. Mrs. Bush is explaining why you are dead, and in addition to being married to the President of the United States she is also a smart lady, she was a librarian! Please listen children.
LAURA BUSH: (Softly, trying hard to explain:) Because without sanctions there'd be no stopping him. And perhaps there'll be a war and many, many more Iraqi children will die, and oh, honey, no one wants that, no one wanted you dead! Oh God no, I mean God no, what sort of animal would want that? No, it's a terrible sin and I'm sure we'll all have to pay for it, me and Bushie and--I call him Bushie, my husband, I'm not supposed to do that in public, I promised I wouldn't but then he went and made that joke the other day that I wasn't out on the campaign trail for the midterm elections because I had to stay in Crawford and sweep the porch after it rained, and you know children I keep a very, very neat house and yes I do sweep the porch but he makes me sound sometimes like a...a frump! And anyway Bushie is a funny name, huh, a funny name for a President, President Bushie? Without sanctions and war, Saddam will go on till he has the power to do something unspeakable to another country, to the US or, or, well any other country, it could be anywhere. He gassed the Kurds! So he must be stopped and you, you were caught in crossfire and that is...
There's just no word for what it is.
And we'll pay for your deaths one way or another. He just hates it when I say that, my husband, it's not in his nature to think that way, but I believe it, sweetie, I do. I think there is guilt when a child dies even if the death was in a just cause, and one person's guilt is guilt for everyone--that's in this beautiful book (she holds out the book)--and we suffer that guilt, me and Bushie and Poppy and Bar and the UN Security Council; and you suffered your death, all sorts of Iraqi people die for the sins of your leader, for his evil, and you know some people say serves 'em right, but that's just vengeful and, and indiscriminate and those people are wrong. They're wrong is all, and (to the angel:) how many children have died in Iraq, you know, what with the sanctions and the bombing and all?
ANGEL: The bombings of course have never stopped; they have been continuous since the Gulf War ended. It never ended.
LAURA BUSH: How many children, do you know?
ANGEL: Hundreds of children. Thousands of children. 150,000 children. 400,000 children. Who's counting? No one is counting. A lot. From diseases related to the sanctions and the power outages and the depleted uranium dust shed from the casings of American missiles? Perhaps related? Probably related? Nearly 600,000 children have died. Many, many children have died.
LAURA BUSH: Oh gosh. And on the bright side, all those dead children and yet look, you have maintained such a low student-teacher ratio. Three-to-one!
ANGEL: We believe a low student-to-teacher ratio is necessary for learning.
LAURA BUSH: I agree!
ANGEL: And yet in the United States it's so high, on the average.
LAURA BUSH: On the average, thirty-to-one, forty-to-one! Way, way too high! I was a teacher once. Before I married Bushie. Or, as I sometimes call him, The Chimp. You know, those ears. It would be nice if there was government money to make schools smaller. For living children. But you see, honey, sweetie, precious--do they have names?
ANGEL: They do, but I'm not allowed to tell you.
LAURA BUSH: Why not?
ANGEL: I'm not allowed to tell you that, either. Sorry.
(Little pause.)
LAURA BUSH: Oh. All right. Well anyway, children, free educations with three-to-one student-teacher ratios or even twenty-to-one student-teacher ratios or even enough classrooms with enough desks to sit in would be swell, wouldn't it, but...one of the lessons from the wonderful book I'm going to read to you today is that if you accept free bread, or free whatever, education, daycare, whatnot, if you accept that free stuff you will have to give up freedom in exchange, and that isn't right. Freedom is what matters, not things of the earth. Like food. And I know you died starving, honey, but look at your nice pajamas! Do you see what I mean?
ANGEL: Children, do you see what Mrs. Bush means?
(They stand and answer, talking happily, but again the only sound is Messiaen's birds.)
CONTINUED, IF YOUR STOMACH HAS NOT ALREADY TURNED!!: http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20030324&c=4&s=kushner
Sorta like they did when The Bent One was on a philandering spree? ; )
Talk about pretentious and overwritten crap, huh...? :)
File this away for future reference; it will be good to be able to assure everybody it's A-Okay to trash candidates' and Congress critters' wives, won't it?
LAURA BUSH: How many children, do you know?
ANGEL: Hundreds of children. Thousands of children. 150,000 children. 400,000 children. Who's counting? No one is counting. A lot. From diseases related to the sanctions and the power outages and the depleted uranium dust shed from the casings of American missiles? Perhaps related? Probably related? Nearly 600,000 children have died. Many, many children have died.
Maybe even a million. A million children have died. Many millions. A hundred million. Some had anvils dropped on their heads. Others were microwaved and eaten. Possibly eaten. Many hundreds of millions, twisted like taffy in enormous taffy-twisting machines. A thousand million children. Maybe more. Maybe a hundred thousand million children, which might be a billion. I’m not sure. Nobody’s sure. A hundred thousand million billion children boiled in oil for no reason whatsoever other than American greed. A hundred thousand million billion trillion children. All dead.
ANGEL: Oh yes, I was about to explain. In Paradise, all dead children wear pajamas.
LAURA BUSH: Always?
ANGEL: Only pajamas, for all eternity. Bathrobes and slippers too, of course.
LAURA BUSH: Well isn't that fascinating. Why is that?
Answer: Because the notoriously gay playwright of "Angels In America" doubtless spends an inordinate amount of time thinking about cute li'l kiddies in their pajamas, maybe...?
Just a thought, of course. :)
ANGEL: Like all children in pajamas they are full of regret that their day has ended. But also secretly they are comforted, like all children in pajamas. Murdered children, the children who died especially terrible deaths--this child for example! (The angel indicates a child:) She was in a shelter in 1991. A smart bomb found its way down the ventilator shaft of the shelter. The smart bomb believed, mistakenly, that it had found the ventilator shaft of a factory that manufactured parts for nuclear weapons, but the bomb was mistaken. Four hundred people were incinerated at a temperature of 900 degrees Fahrenheit. It was on CNN. Perhaps you watched?
Rewrite:
ANGEL: Like all children in pajamas they are full of regret that their day never started, Mrs. Clinton. But also secretly they are comforted, like all children in pajamas. Murdered children, the children who died especially terrible deaths--this child for example! (The angel indicates a child:) She was in a womb in 1991. A vacum nozzle with a knife found its way up the uterus to the womb. The abortionist, mistakenly, believed that he had found mass of tissue, but was mistaken. This child joined tens of thousands just like it. It was never on CNN. Perhaps you never watched, Mrs. Clinton?
Wonder if I could get some of that art money???
Time to sweep out the trash. :)
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.