Posted on 09/17/2004 4:59:34 PM PDT by MadIvan
There has been some managing of expectations by the Bush Administration of Kitty Kelley's new biography, The Family: The Real Story of the Bush Dynasty. It has so far been described both as "garbage" and "tittle-tattle".
"But they haven't read it yet!" wailed Miss Kelley on the Today programme. In which case, there may be some even rougher language in store from the Bush lexicon. (And there is plenty. According to Kelley, a journalist once asked George W what he had just been talking about with his father. "Pussy," he replied.)
The argument used against Kitty Kelley is that she is a chick-historian, dealing in private lives rather than public policy. Everybody would be much more comfortable with a book such as James Naughtie's Blair, The Accidental American, which analyses politicians' speeches or presidential reflections in the back of campaign aeroplanes.
Yet Kelley goes further than many serious historians I have read in tackling the enigma of President Bush. The fact that she does so without managing to talk to any of the main protagonists or being allowed access to official papers is to her credit (although she is slightly extravagant with secondary sources).
It means that she casts her net wider and tends to scoop up the divorced and the dispossessed. Sharon Bush, George W's estranged sister-in-law, gives a poignant account of the strength of the family dynasty and how cold it is outside.
But the most plausible description of the President comes from his former Yale pals. Many are vexed that George W should have become president when his contemporaries regarded him as a benign dunce. One, Tom Wilner, railed against the injustice: "George had absolutely no intellectual curiosity about anything. He wasn't interested in ideas or books or causes. He didn't travel. He didn't read the newspapers. He didn't watch the news; he didn't even go to the movies… how anyone ever got out of Yale without developing some interest in the world besides booze and sports stuns me.''
Naturally, one has warmed to Bush by now. More so, after a hilarious account of his Yale contemporaries wrestling with their consciences over whether or not they should join him for a 35th-year reunion picnic. One of those who did show up had changed his name from Peter to Petra. George W said to her: "Now you've come back as yourself."
Bush's knack of simplifying complicated matters becomes winning. He really does make everyone around him look too clever by half. One is suddenly glad that the former layabout won through, rather than all his pleased-with-themselves contemporaries. George W Bush must be the only person in America who did not grow up expecting to be President of the United States.
Everybody loves a Prodigal Son, especially one who is so kind to his mother. According to Kelley, Barbara Bush depended on her sunny-natured son. It was George who drove her to hospital when she had a miscarriage, and who kept her company when his father was allegedly distracted by his passion for Jennifer Fitzgerald (a relationship lasting several years and of absolutely no interest to serious historians).
Kelley's many detractors accuse her of casting Democrat slurs on George W, but I would say he emerges from the book with his reputation slightly strengthened. The only sign of Kitty's Democrat tendencies is in her chivvying of the Bush wives for being too accommodating.
She notes that an exhibition of the Bush family archives, endorsed by George Bush Snr, is called "Fathers and Sons''. The men are respectful and kindly towards their spouses, but do not expect to see them out of the house. George Herbert Walker Bush was once seen to lose his temper with Barbara after she made a joke at his expense. He, in turn, referred fondly to her as a "blimp", while George W called Laura a lump. Barbara congratulated her husband on his sense of humour.
There is a heartfelt, previously published quote from Barbara on her bout of depression. "I was ashamed of my depression. My code was 'You think about other people, stop thinking about yourself'… I went through a sort of difficult time because suddenly women's lib had made me feel that my life had been wasted… I felt inadequate and that I hadn't accomplished enough… But I got over it, thank heavens." Laura Bush, meanwhile, emerges as a kind of Tennessee Williams character, forever reading and smoking on the porch.
Kelley is clearly impatient with the "invisible spouses", but many women and a great many Republican voters will congratulate them for their sacrifice. Barbara, like her mother-in-law before her, was a domestic martinet who never forgot a parents' evening or lost a child's sock. There is a wry quote from her: "In a marriage where one is so willing to take on responsibility and the other is so willing to keep the bathrooms clean, that's the way you get treated."
Cherie Blair's book on Downing Street spouses implicitly shares the Kelley view that women must carve a role for themselves or fade. She is indignant that Downing Street spouses are overlooked by officials. In one Christmas photograph, Barbara Bush detailed the activities of every member of the family except for herself. The difference between self-sacrifice and self-erasement can be fine.
On the other hand, only total dedication could have produced George W. Barbara Bush is described as a single-minded soccer mum. When her son did not make the teams, but was put in charge of cheering, it was Barbara who turned up and yelled her head off on the touchline, to the patronising disdain of the other mothers.
This is where the Democrat-style mothers are on the defensive. The Daily Mail this week attacked Cherie Blair for publishing a book in the same week that Leo was starting school. (Kitty Kelley does, incidentally, demonstrate that troublesome children afflict saintly mothers as well as working ones. Neil Bush is the Mark Thatcher of his family.)
In its way, Cherie's book is a more polite, less nosy version of Kitty Kelley's. It takes account of those who do not make decisions, but who are most affected by them. In other words, it is social history. Or tittle-tattle, if you prefer.
Actually that quote was previously attributed to Vernon Jordan when asked about a conversation with Clinton. Now tell me, which sounds more viable?
Guilty. I myself am about 14 years old at heart, though I am now 41. This is not a bad thing, it's an American thing. It's what made Dubya land a jet on an aircraft carrier and it's what made his father jump out of an airplane when he was 80+ years old. It is the mindset which made America what it is today.
A nation of Forty-Somethings who accept age as a hurdle to living life, will not survive even the easiest challenges it encounters.
Ahhh, I thought that was the Korean word for a womens private parts. Never the less. Every Air force/Air Guard figher pilot whether a real fighter pilot or a derivative such as intercept pilot (what was practiced mostly in the Airforce of that time frame, hey it took Top Gun to make it known that real fighter pilots where still needed),
the un-writen code, these guys practiced was, driving fast, drinking, women, driving fast, drinking , women.....
GWB simply did his best to become a proficient pilot, and follow the rules of engagment.......driving fast, drinking, women. If he used cocain, surely it would have been brought out a long time ago by someone on the far left.
I truly believe these reports are yet again attempt to discredit this president. Hey when you are loosing, those with little real honor or integrity must resort to lies.
As for lies, Big John Kerry appears to have been taught very early in life, that is the way it is done. Because as most of us are aware, he can lie in the same day two or more times and think most will time he will get away with it. WHY DID NOT OUR GOVERNMENT FORMERLY CHARGE HIM WITH THE WAR CRIMES AND INCORRECT BEHAVOR according to the United States 14th Amendment, article 3, and a few of the articles contained in the Military Code of Justice? He should at best be walking in endless circles at Fort Leavenworth military prison for his illegal actions while meeting with the "ENEMY" in Paris while still a Naval Reserve Officer, and all his involvment with the Anti Vietname War movement? I cannot figure this out. He
according to our Constitution has no right to be neither a United States Senator nor run for president period.
Beats me.
Your family has my sympathy that you have opted out of growing up. Peter Pan would be proud though.
I think Kitty Kelly is on drugs. She is on Hardball and she speaks very slowly. She can not answer a straight question.
Is this the same "prominent" lawyer Tom Wilner that has been trying to get people out of Guantanimo?
I think you are correct. It was Jordan. Kitty is getting her Presidents mixed up. Maybe Kitty spent some time in the Oval Office practicing her "investigative skills"
That's m' Dubya!
If true, that's a gem...getting in a retroactive dig by dissing a woman's masculinity!
This ain't Wheel of Fortune, dude, and I wasn't addressing the veracity of Kitty Kelley's reporting. If you would have bothered to check who I was responding to, you would have seen that it had nothing to do with whether Dubya said this or not. SengirV thinks "Pussy" is the mark of a man?
You gave me an idea - If Kitty Kelley married John Kerry, she could be KKK........
After all the trashing and GW emerges somehow stronger. I bet Kitty didn't quite plan this, LOL.
:))
That was a quote from Vernan Jordan when asked what he and clinton had been talking about. That was in the news for awhile and Kitty Kelley just decided to make it a Bush quote. For God's sake, the woman is a flat-out liar and always has been.
This is an excellent take.
And, I have to say...reading about Barbara Bush, (and what Kitty Kelley sees as being her negatives) is heart-warming.
Barbara sounds JUST like my Mam - in the way she had a no-nonsense approach to her depression; stood in the shadows while her family shined; was a true matriarch behind it all, with family at the core.
I'd almost borrow (I said borrow, not BUY) a copy of the Kelley book just to read Kelley's venom in writing about a great woman.
The argument used against Kitty Kelley is that she is a chick-historian, dealing in private "li V es" rather than public policy.
Who talks about "pussy" with their dad? Kelley also put a story in her book about a woman who supposedly did coke with W at Camp David while his dad was president. This woman read that and screeched; she said that was as big a lie as you could ever make up. Don't believe this story just because some shmo reported it.
Kennedy dropped out of the campaign for the town of the Kopeckne family IIRC.
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